Critique End of the day on the mountain

[manzico]

I've been on vacation so I've been up the mountain quite a bit over the past few weeks and each time I'm up there there's always something interesting to shoot.

#1 - After a recent trip up with my wife (no chance to take pics on that visit), the light was pretty impressive and I happened to be walking down to one of my favorite subjects up there (great old tree you'll see in a bit), and the setting sun illuminating the brush up there was just amazing. I wanted to capture it on my next visit so when I went up again, I had a plan. Needless to say it's a really challenging image to capture with a ton of dynamic range. Here's my best attempt at capturing that:

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#2 - My original intention was to create a black and white with this next one, but it didn't have the punch that I wanted, and the color of the setting sun on the rocks was too compelling for me to get rid of, but who knows, maybe I'll play with it a bit more:

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#3 - I wanted to capture some people in this next one to help give the shot some scale:

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#4 - The afore mentioned old tree that is a favorite subject of mine up there:

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As always, CC are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[olshroom]

Stunning photo's. #3 does show the scale but in MHO I would crop the left half out. I find it a bit distracting.

 

[Palouse]

Like you, I like people in many of my landscape shots. These are all very good. How was #4 lit?

 

[greyflash]

Beautiful images with wonderful lighting. Like the depth on #3 and of course people to give it scale. The Pinion Pine in #4 is amazing.

 

[Mike Buckley]

In addition to the other comments and question, I really like the flare in the third one.

 

[manzico]

Like you, I like people in many of my landscape shots. These are all very good. How was #4 lit?

Thanks. Certain shots just benefit from the sense of scale that including a person (or some other commonly relatable object) provides. As for the 4th shot. It never hurts to have your iPhone handy. I used it to light paint the tree. I moved it around quite a bit to make sure there were no shadows that were too hard. That was shot at 14mm so I was actually really close to the tree for the photo.

Dave

 

[Palouse]

Best use of an iPhone yet. And that explains the light temperature!

 

[manzico]

In addition to the other comments and question, I really like the flare in the third one.

Mike,

Thanks. On the first shot I worked really hard to make sure there wasn't too much flare. That one was not only and HDR bracketed set, but I actually angled the camera in 3 different directions (so three different bracketed sets) to move the flare around so I could selectively remove it easily later. When I was processing the third photo though, the flare just kind of worked for me so I left it in.

Dave

 

[manzico]

Best use of an iPhone yet. And that explains the light temperature!

Yeah, the color temp was way off originally. I had to significantly warm it up selectively on the tree, but I didn't want to make it too warm since, you know, night-time and all.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[Bolampau]

Really impressed with the iPhone light painting!

 

[manzico]

Really impressed with the iPhone light painting!

Thanks. The lights on the newer phones are actually pretty bright so you can do more than you think with them.

Dave

 

[Binnur]

Very nice set, #4 is stunning. Thanks for the tip about the iphone.