The Trough

[John 2]

This is a place that I keep returning to. Its a beauty spot called the Trough of Bowland in the fells near Lancaster. It seems to have all of the elements of a half decent landscape but I'm never quite sure about the result so I thought I would seek comment from the experts. C&C very welcome.

Fuji X Pro1
35mm Standard Fuji lens
1/45th sec @ f11 ISO 200

[Sergio M.]

John, I'm no expert, so I hope you don't mind my commenting.

I can see why you keep returning to the spot. I really like the different elements, such as the stream that leads me into the image and then the light and shadow, the vibrant colors, the building, hills and trees, they all keep me engaged and looking at the photo. On the slightly negative side, there appears to be softness or slight blurring, which might be due to camera movement or a deliberate creative choice, so take with a grain of salt.

Sergio

[deetheturk]

Hi John,stunning place to photograph,imho though,i would probably crop a bit off the bottom,and i'm with Sergio,the image looks blurred to me also.

Cheers David

[pnodrog]

Very pleasant setting. I agree with David that the bottom up to the first bend in the brook? (river, stream) is not adding to the image. You have done well bringing out the valley shadow region at first I thought it was an HDR image but if it is you have still done a fair bit of localised lightening.

I am reluctant to comment on the softness because it is a problem I seem to get with tinypic uploads. I now put the sharpen to max when exporting the image with lightroom.

[Wavelength]

A comment from a non-expert:

This is such a beautiful image, that i am envious of your frequent visits there

Regards

[dje]

Very nice John. I like the composition and the colours. Your choice of time of day is good as it gives some interesting light and shade.

I'd like to see the full size image too before commenting much on sharpness. I suspect the light on the foliage may be playing a part in the appearance of softness but I don't know.

Dave

[Dave Humphries]

Hi John,

I agree with comments suggesting it isn't as sharp as it ought to be, I also notice the distant sunlight foliage detail is quite smudgy and wondered if this was a jpg capture or RAW - then I checked the EXIF and confirmed it was shot RAW, which is good, because it means another go at PP may tease more detail out when sharpening.

I also believe it was over exposed (looking at the histogram), which won't do you any favours - you could have shot at say, 1/90s or perhaps faster, not lost so much detail in the highlights and had less risk of camera shake or leaf movement during the exposure. At 200 iso, noise should not be a problem, even if a bit more shadow recovery is needed, especially after downsizing - so be sure to sharpen after the down size to post it on TinyPic

Lovely scene though.

Hope that helps, Dave

PS - for anyone that doesn't know - when viewing images here at CiC in a web browser to assess sharpness, it is essential they are viewed at 1:1 pixel ratio to your viewing screen, so that means;

a) No browser zoom - Ctrl+0 (zero) resets it to "100%"
b) Click on the picture to view it in Lytebox
c) Hit the "F" key to be sure it is fullsize

Only when all three are done can you be certain what you see is what is available.

If it still doesn't look sharp, right click on the image and select "Image Details" or "View Image Info" and see what the longest edge Dimension is - if it's 1599px and hosted at TinyPic, this almost certainly means the image poster has not downsized before uploading, so TinyPic downsized it - which softens it.
(I acknowledge John has downsized before uploading - it is 1474 x 1000px)

HTH,

[John 2]

Thanks for all of your comments. I suspect that the lack of sharpness is simply down to a handheld exposure of 1/45th sec with a 35mm lens (no stabilisation). The suggested crop from the bottom is spot on. It's a great improvement - see below. Dave, I don't think the histogram actually represents the image as taken. The original contrast between the shadow areas and the sunlit areas needed some tone mapping to rebalance them after which I layered in some graduated shadow to the base areas. Worth another visit but this time with a tripod. Thanks for all of the help. It's valued.