Azure Shadowsby
NapCatComment by sarampo: Hi Walter, greetings from the Critique Club!
So you decided to take the plunge and enter in the challenges, and for the first entry you landed a 37th place, very good!
Regarding your photo:
Composition
Although the tree in front does detract a bit from the image, the overall lines help to lessen this effect. Your eyes are attracted to the waves and a bit away from the trees, as if they are secondary.
Technique / Lighting
As mentioned below, with a shutter speed of 1/2000 you had some space to compromise in aperture and maybe a lower ISO (but I guess with minus 27 it was better not to have the picture shaken :)
Processing
Here is where I think it was a bit overdone. The levels and saturation caused that blue halo around the tree trunks, giving it a rather HDR feel to it (not in a good way). Probably you could have gone in the opposite direction, slightly desaturating it, and boosted the contrast, then you could've retained the original punch.
Overall
For this challenge this fitted perfectly, and you still got a 6.8 from commentators, so it pleased a lot of people.
I think that this picture with good processing could easily be in the top 20.
Continue sending in pictures :)
PS - if you want (since you're a member, you can do it) instead of putting your comments in the comment section, you can edit the details of the picture, and include it in the description.
If you have any questions feel free to
contact me.
Regards,
Joao
Photographer found comment helpful.