[Jim Dockery]

Tigerotor, I'll jump in on the 1st one. I like the composition but the light is flat, and the colors dull, looks like mid day. I'll bet it would be an outstanding location at either sunrise or sunset. This is a common problem with hiker's pics - we spend much of the day in this type of light, esp. if we have to drive to and from the hike thus missing the best light of the day. Staying the night obviously takes care of that.

[Tigerotor77W]

[Jim Dockery]

I didn't start out alone, although I do a lot solo now (esp. when on a photo expedition). I'd say joining a club, like the Mountaineers, would be the best way to get some safe mountain experience and meet new partners. Getting to the cool location at the right time is the key to oustanding landscape photos. For me this often means starting the hike in the dark with a headlamp Stay open to serendipity - your best shot of the day may be found along the way! That can be a tough decision though if stopping means you'll miss the best light at your final planned destination. On the second shot, which is quite effective, I'd niggle about the droopy flower - might have pulled that one out. Might also have been good to work the depth of field so that all the flowers were sharp. If the mountain wasn't blurry enough then you could always add to that in post. I'd also crop a bit off the top.

[mike]

I like the flower shot. Don't mind the dead flower. I agree to crop the top and add more flower to the bottom as it is the main subject. I'm partial to that type of flower shot myself. However I like to use a wider lens for more dof. From the exif I see that you used a 40mm Canon which with the crop factor is pretty long. It also put you farther away from the flowers (5ft) to get them in the frame. A wide angle would allow you to get right up close and get more flowers in the frame. Finally stop down from f2.8 and add blur in post as Jim suggests.

[Kim Brown]

Tiger - To me, I think both need croppping. Too much lake at the bottom on the first photo, and too much sky at the top of the 2nd photo. And I'm not sure the summit needs to be in the 2nd photo at all. Crop the top way down - without the summit, it's nice. But keep enough slope to show it's a mountain, though, because the flowers alone aren't special enough to hold the photo by themselves. I like the dead flower - perfect flowers drive me crazy, unless the intent is perfection, which in this photo it is not (is it?). The 1st photo - that square thing at the end of the lake (center of photo is problematic). If it's a rock, consider making it not look like a structure. If it is a structure, consider making it look like a rock. I might be full of baloney, but to me, cropping makes or breaks a photo. [Edit] Yeah, OK, I'd take out the dead flower. The others do look fresh and new, so it's clearly not a photo of crumpled flowers at the end of the season.

[Tigerotor77W]

Thanks for the replies, everyone -- man, it'd be sweet to have an extra set of eyes with me when I go hiking / picture-taking. I want to reply to this in more detail, but these two days are a bit hectic... I promise I'll be back soon. You all have very good points, some of which I want to ask more about and some of which I'd gladly try to adapt for next time. Gimme a second -- I'll be back soon!

[GaliWalker]

Kim touched on all the points I wanted to make...especially: - Photo 1: Get rid of the square thing in the center of the photo (most distracting) - Photo 2: Get rid of the top of the mountain, but not the slope ...which makes this kind of a redundant post.

[The Angry Hiker]

The mountain is out of focus in photo #2. Okay, I know what you were trying to do, but to me the mountain is the focal point of the of the composition and you've rendered it insignificant. So what you essentially have is a landscape photo with no landscape. Crop it down like everyone suggests, and you'll have an interesting shot of flowers, if there is such a thing. And lose the outhouse in the first photo.

[Jim Dockery]

Unlike some of the others I wouldn't crop off the top of the mountain. I like seeing that it's the Eiger Norwand.

[Matt]

T, I find the first photo quite appealing. I like the way that the subtle shading of the soft blues in the center (sky, lake, & distant peaks) contrasts with the stronger darker brown slopes at the sides. I also wouldn't crop out the foreground. The submerged rocks in the water draw me into the photo, and the hint of brown shading into blue ties into the other colors of the photo. Jim D is also correct that evening or morning light would provide a much more dramatic image of the peaks, but I like what this photo did with the mid-day light. Which only goes to show that different elements appeal to different viewers.

[Tigerotor77W]

All right! Let's see how this goes. :-D First, and most important, thanks for all the replies. I've never gotten a full page of replies for two photos... I appreciate all the time you took to analyze and reply! Second, this is not me getting defensive. There's no point to my acting that way: I can't change the choices I made when taking these photos, and I can't improve if I don't listen. I would really like the opportunity to discuss this (skype, maybe, if there are too many words to type as a reply?), and that's the reason why I'm writing all this. See point three... Third, although I am not at all shocked by the suggestions, I do like discussion and would like to add my own reasoning for why I did what I did. In some cases, this will appear as, "I knew that," but it's far more important that you pointed it out. It shows that I can't learn everything by myself -- and this is applicable in more ways than just to photography. Rather than quote every single post -- because every one has had something worth commenting on (I can post up what I drafted but didn't post last night, too. In that reply, I did comment on every single post but Matt's, whose reply I didn't see until this morning) -- I'll try to address some generic themes. Lake photo I thought the suggestion to crop the most immediate foreground out an interesting one, and I'll try it out next time I've got my photos hard drive with me. My reason for this particular crop was actually the same thought as Matt's -- it offers different detail from what's in the background. I chose that spot to take the photo for the stuff in the water, actually, but given the number of suggestions to have done otherwise, clearly the intention didn't come across as clear as it could have. Things to think about next time when I compose. The thing in the middle of the lake is some sort of wooden structure... not an outhouse, but no practical way I could have removed it at capture. I can probably try some cloning in post. I accepted it for what it was, so the question here is: is this typically something that one would remove in post? (I didn't exactly do a good job of making it part of the scene... it's just "there.") Additional explanation -- skip if you don't want to read the excuse! Lighting in this photo was honestly the best I could do at the time. I actually came across this lake the first time at about 12:30 on a Saturday afternoon, when the sun was truly right over head and the wind was chopping up the water. Immediately, I wanted to go back for sunset, but I didn't have my tripod on me that day so didn't do it. I then turned my attention to doing it on Sunday. This lake is roughly an hour's hike from a gondola station (... yeah, such is Swiss hiking! TR to come (I think)) that stops running after 4:30 PM. (Civil twilight was roughly at 7:30 PM.) I could hike down from the gondola station to the town at the bottom, but this is a ~3 hr, steep hike and I didn't want to do that long of a hike in the dark. In addition, I would have had to have really scurried to catch the last train out of that town (~11:30 PM), and given that my knee was bothering me that day, I didn't want to risk missing the train. I could have rented a bike, but biking down in the dark with just a headlamp (I wouldn't want to go down a hill that steep holding a flashlight in one hand) scared me a bit; it also would have been a bit difficult returning the bike: no place stayed open that late. So I scratched the idea for a sunset photo, even though the sun would be in the right spot. Sunrise would have been a similar logistical issue, but I would have had to hike the entire way from my hotel to the lake -- all uphill and probably 9 hours of hiking -- to get there by sunrise, so I scratched this idea, too: I like sleep! It also became obvious that sunrise wouldn't work given the way the mountains face. Matt, you nailed pretty much exactly what my sentiments were about this photo... I tried to capture it as best I could at the time while knowing that sunset would give better colors and more contrast. But I didn't post this to slyly say, "Ha, gotcha. I knew what you all were going to suggest." The question I have is this: at what point do you "know" that you're ready for a nighttime hike by yourself? Switzerland's trails are all extremely well marked, but if I'm not familiar with how quickly weather changes or the area in general, how do you overcome the fear of "what happens if I get lost?" Two weeks later and sunset would be early enough that I wouldn't need to worry about missing the last train out of the town. Sunflowers So a bit of explanation first. First, I saw sunflowers. I took a picture with them as the foreground, but not with the Eiger in the background. Then I walked a few feet further and saw better framing with the Eiger in it. These sunflowers belong to a hotel that sits on a hill. Below the hotel are a bunch of other rooftops. I got as close as I could to get most of the flowers and took the shot; if I backed up any more or widened at all, I would have gotten more roofs (you can already see some tree tops poking into the bottom left of the photo). I took two shots with this framing: this one and one at f/8. The reason I found this scene so interesting is that the sunflowers are lit really, really nicely -- and yet they still sit in the figurative shadow of the Eiger, which in this case is also literal: the Eiger is practically a silhouette. TAH, I agree that these flowers really aren't interesting... I was going off the play of words of "sun" "flower," which clearly isn't strong enough a play on words to have come across here. (In other words, there is clearly more I could have done / can do to have made it a stronger association.) About the dead flower: I honestly didn't see it when I took the shot. There's no excuse here. Question, however: what methods do you all use to "hide" undesireable elements of nature? In this case, as I said, the flowers belonged to the hotel -- so I couldn't just "pluck" one. Keep in mind that I didn't see the dead one, so the point of this really has to be for next time, when I do pay more attention! Sky above Eiger: this ties into the previous photo, too. Sometimes, I try to plan whether I'll end up printing a photo. For that reason, if the composition "works," I will at times stick to a common format (e.g. 3x2, 8x10, 2x1) in order to make printing easier. It's a poor excuse for the web, so there are actually two questions here... 1) What is distracting about the sky? I'm honestly not sure what I see it as; I can't really back it up with anything... substantial. But yet, I still like it for some reason. (Again, I need to try it and see what happens; I'm just asking for your take if you don't feel annoyed about this long of a post yet.) 2) When you all take photos, do you take the camera sensor aspect ratio to determine your composition? I feel like I should be able to make a statement with any composition, including that of the sensor's native format. I guess this is a, "Do I try to make do with what I have?" question. Eiger: I kind of like the mountain, but to be honest I never even considered lopping off the top. I need to go play -- again, here's another example where something just simply didn't occur to me! Thanks for suggesting this, Kim! (And galiwalker, redundancy could also mean it's worth doing. That's two of you who saw this to one of me who didn't!) Number of flowers in focus: I thought Eiger was too in focus (took away from the flowers) with f/8 so decided on this take instead. Glad I have both versions... appreciate the challenge to look at this differently! Conclusions What I've learned: - I need to be more observant with what I'm shooting. - I need to learn more about hiking to photograph in the best light (sometimes -- as Jim pointed out, the spur of the moment shot can be the best one, too -- and though amusing in hindsight, I have to meekly say that I thought there was something in the sunflowers one!) - Cropping is not evil. - I still have a lot to learn. :-) And a final question... I just posted the first three chapters of War and Peace here -- what do I owe you all? And... if my own photos aren't quite there, how exactly am I qualified to provide feedback to you; i.e. what can I do to make / keep this thread sustainable?

[Jim Dockery]

Tigerotor, all you owe us is similar critiques if anyone else posts a shot. All are valid, as are your explanations on how and why you took the shots. While it is interesting and often helpful to hear how others would have done it different, doesn't mean you should follow their advice. If you like it it's good (at least for you!). I have plenty of mid-day pics like that that I wouldn't print to put on the wall, but I still like em because of the memories.

[The Angry Hiker]

Okay, I'm ready for a critique. Feel free to be brutally honest. Don't hold anything back, folks. I can take it.

Rainier Vista

First Snow on Tinkham

Marmot on Silver Peak

[Riverside Laker]

Angry, you need to rotate your photos 90° CCW.

[Quark]

Sigh.....yet another photo of Mt. Rainier?????