Waldo's Peakby
ankurlahotiComment by Kavey: Critique Club
Initial thoughts
Reasonably nice landscape, spoiled by overprocessing and overly dominant shadows.
Composition/ Content
The scene presented here is a pleasant one with some interesting curves in the road (I think a vantage point showing a more complete zig zag would be even more appealing) and an intriguing glimpse of a city below.
The off-centred composition of the main hill provides a nice diagonal and balance.
Background
The clouds are forming some wonderful shapes and add so much more than a plain sky could have. I like the sense of depth provided by the haziness of the farthest hills and the city area.
Camera Work & Processing
I don't know whether the processing is an attempt to correct exposure problems but it strikes me as very excessive.
There is the strangest very bright line of separation between the main foreground and the background sky and cityscape. This looks very unnatural.
The shadow on the front of the hill is very dark and, because the hill is such a large part of the image, means too much of the image is too dark, in my opinion. Shooting with the sun in a different position might improve this by giving some lovely greens and details in that main area.
This darkness is contrasted against a really bright background and I think that overall contrast is just too high.
Fits The Challenge
In my opinion, the Waldo challenge is about hiding a person in plain view, so to speak, rather than hiding a person by making them so small as to be a mere few pixels. Whilst the person on the hill isn't hard to spot he or she is almost incidental to the image for me.
That said, the image does fit the challenge in that it includes a person that the viewer has to search for.
My Opinion On The Photo
Poor use of natural lighting and overprocessed but does have potential.
Photographer found comment helpful.