Daybreak at Big Bay Lakeby
juliannjComment by JakeKurdsjuk: Critique Club Comment:
First off, let me compliment you on your view!! I'd love to be able to wake up to that every morning. Sunrises tend to disappear much faster than sunsets in my experience, to bravo on capturing a beautiful one.
While the scene is absolutely stunning, there are a few things with how you processed the image that made it less than ideal for me (I was one of your 5's). First off, as Devinder mentioned initially, the reds. They can be notoriously had to tame, especially with flowers, and while you've managed to preserve the details within them, they are certainly over-saturated. I'm also wondering if your color treatment didn't lose some of the wonderful oranges and yellows that are hinted at closer to the horizon? Selective color adjustments are always safer bets here, though a little more time consuming. Without knowing specifically what you did in post it's hard for me to suggest ways to correct or avoid doing this in the future, but beware of the Saturation slider as it can make some colors pop while simultaneously blowing out others.
Compositionally it is fairly sound, though the decking/walk in the bottom left is a little distracting. Were you to crop up from the bottom right corner (you want to save those blues) and land the horizon on the bottom Rule Of Thirds line I believe it removes enough of it to keep it from being a line that leads you away from the subject. One other little nit to pick for me are the vertical lines of the building. Camera angle has given you a slight forward tilt there that it easily corrected with a vertical perspective adjustment tool available in just about every editor.
I hope to see many more beautiful sunrises from you in the future!!
Message edited by author 2014-09-11 10:13:32. 
Photographer found comment helpful.