Glacier Peak from Ebey's Landing

[lovelife65]

Ebey's Landing is a beautiful preserved farm area in Coupeville, WA with wonderful hiking and beaches/ocean views.
This one was more towards the farms with Glacier Peak lit by the sun.
It's not as good of a shot as I wanted, but still a beautiful place so thought I'd throw it out there.

boo by sharonkay finley, on Flickr

[Shadowman]

Nice effort, I think a little off the top and bottom would really make this composition work, for showing the scale of the mountain in relation to the village perhaps portrait mode from a different angle.

[DanK]

I think this is a very nice capture, but I think it needs work.

First, what's the subject? I think it is the contrast between the farm and the mountains. I would crop to focus on those. That means cropping some from the top--I wouldn't want people's eyes pulled away from the subject--and somewhat from the left. I would not crop at all from the bottom, as I think the green there forms an important part of the composition.

Second, the white balance seems wrong to me. I don't know what hour it was, so it is hard to know. I'm guessing late afternoon, at the beginning of golden hour--because the snow is yellower than the paint that I am guessing is white on the buildings. So I took readings off several of the white paint areas to figure out how much to cool the image down.

Third, there appears to be some haze, which is common over such distances. I applied a weak amount of Lightroom's dehaze adjustment. That's questionable, as it changes color balance too.

Fourth, you have two sensor-dirt spots near the middle. I removed them. I also removed the water tower and the two pylons on the left.

Fifth, I added a bit of contrast. Because I did this in Lightroom, that also boosted saturation a bit. In photoshop, I would have used a luminosity blend mode to avoid this.

Finally, these edits made the mountains an intense blue. I desaturated that a bit.

Not a great edit, but I think it illustrates several different directions you could think about. See what you think. I hope this helps.

[Rufus]

My immediate reaction was also that a crop to remove some of the sky and some of the area on the left of your image would strengthen the relationship between the snow capped peak and the village.

Personally I like the warm colours in your original and am not too fazed by white houses that are not white. However, I also like the deeper saturation and stronger contrast between the blues and greens in Dan's edit.

So maybe there is a middle path to explore.

[DanK]

David,

An interesting suggestion. Since it is trivial for me to change just that one parameter, I reduced the white balance shift by about 1/3: from -29 on the Lightroom scale to -19. Here's what that does. It's a subtle change, but perhaps it's better.

Dan

[Rufus]

Dan - I think your edit in #5 brings out the best of all worlds and increased earthy reds in buildings are a bonus.

[DanK]

Dan - I think your edit in #5 brings out the best of all worlds and increased earthy reds in buildings are a bonus.

I think you are right; the first one was a tad cold.

Up to a point, WB is really a matter of taste. My preference is to try to start with a truly neutral WB but then to adjust to taste.

[lovelife65]

Thanks for the suggestions and edits guys. I had made several edits, and even had one pretty close to Dan's first, but it felt too cold to me. The final version is the best. I now see the one i posted was a tad too warm. I also struggled with wondering about too much saturation vs. looking flat. This was an afternoon shot, yes, right around 4:00 when the sun was beginning to go down.
In terms of subject, that is always difficult for me in a landscape shot, as really the subject is the overall scene in which the mountain shows its vast glory in relation to the seemingly small farm&land. I wasn't sure if just the mountain would work, and do have a shot of just the farmland as it is in multiple colors and quite pretty.