The Weekly Landscape Thread

This weekly thread, starting on a Friday, allows us to showcase our Landscape photos and get some feedback.
Opening up discussions, not only on content, style, composition & techniques, but also on the emotion in the image, and of course about the place itself.

It’s easy to participate

Post an image or short essay with a title and description. To make it easier to view in the forum, all comments should include the original title and at least one of the original images as a quote.

Thread Guidelines:

1. This thread is for sharing and developing our Landscape photography skills.
2. Entries can be a single image or a short photo essay (2 to 10 connected images that tell a story).
3. Give your entry a clear title and perhaps also explain why you took it, or the story it tells.
4. Provide constructive feedback on others’ images/essays.
   Try to go beyond simple praise or dismissal and explain why you like it, or what caught your eye.
   ”Likes” are encouraged too.
5. Negative feedback and suggestions are also OK (be polite, honest, and constructive).

Giving feedback is just as important as receiving feedback, both help to improve our artistic and technical skills.

What is a Landscape photo?

This means different things for different people. For me, it includes a wide range of photos taken outside, … from wide sweeping vistas to smaller details found along the route. Seascapes, landscapes, cityscapes, woodland shots, landscapes at night with some stars, and lots more are all OK. They could also include man-made objects and people or animals outside, but they are not usually the main subject. Show us, with your photos, what Landscape Photography means to you.

Motivation

I love to go hiking in the natural world and capture photos along the way. It keeps me fit (physically and mentally) and provides some beautiful memories. Processing those images when I return is fun too, it often helps to enhance what I saw.

Downloading and re-posting

It’s often challenging to verbalise comments about images. Instead, it’s sometimes easier to “show.” Unless the original poster specifically states otherwise (in each original post), participants are free to download, alter, and re-post images in replies to express their analysis and critique. Downloaded and altered images shall not be used for any other purposes or uploaded elsewhere.

Enough said,… Go out, enjoy the open air, take some photos. Bring back the memories and post them here in the Weekly Landscape Thread 😊

...looking forward to seeing your images,

Sometimes you need a tripod and an ND filter

I didn’t have either with me last weekend and don’t usually carry them. Even so I tried to take a shot of this “intimate landscape” at the little local stream.
A beaver had recently dammed the stream and just upstream from the dam the water was deeper, moving slower and swirling around. I thought I might try a longer exposure to show those spirals. But, even at the lowest ISO and highest F number, in these bright conditions, I could only get a shutter speed of just over 1 second; which was too short to really bring out the spirals.
I did my best at hand holding using a branch to help stabilize the camera, but an ND filter and a tripod would have made this photo better.

You can, at least, see here the potential of a "perhaps interesting photo" that could have been made with a longer exposure time 😉

Sivrihisar, Türkiye. I was travelling to Ankara from my hometown. I was lucky to find a nice and safe spot to capture this photo.

I am not sure if this is better

or this

They all have magnificent sky, but the first for me. Feels more balanced.

Here are a few "landscape" shots from the neighborhood this week. Not much in the way of creativity... just exercising my index finger. The first one is looking south with Mt. Rainier on the left and toward the center are two tugs with fuel barges heading north. The second picture is looking west with one of the tugs that has passed by and the Olympic Range as a backdrop. The third is a composite/pano of 5 vertical frames (scaled to about ~45% of original size) taken at a location that is roughly 35 miles (55 km) closer to the mountain... in the town where I grew up. Lots of sky and water in the first two. I'll try to sharpen my eye this coming week! :-) Although that may be too tall of an order.

'

They are all nice and moody, but the first stands out for me as well. The mountains feel like more of a part of the composition.

From around Mono Lake. Such a photographers paradise.

Another vote from me for the first shot :-)
The third is also interesting, where you can search around and see more details of the foreground buildings

The shot with the tug is nice, but I think you could move the horizon a bit away from the middle by cropping some from either the sky or the water.
The light and details in the pano is good. Those houses are really glowing in the light coming from (presumably) low down)

The rock formations in the first are very interesting , as you said, a photographer's paradise.
You've captured them with a good composition and lovely gentle colours.

Love the two-tone tree in the second

I can feel your pain :)

Thanks for all the feedback you gave, I was happy with the first crop too but I am a bit useless when it comes to what to include/exclude :)

Very nice shots, the last one has very nice details in it.

It is indeed !

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, some cropping... I agree! I mentioned this a few weeks or months ago... that "cropping" is a very strategic PP step and often (very often) makes a huge difference in the final result. In this instance, I basically left the first two pictures in the standard 3:2 aspect ratio (after some SLIGHT cropping due to straightening the horizon). And I also alluded to "a lot of sea and sky" but didn't make the effort to do anything about it. So... I have now shaved-off some of the water and I think it is more pleasing this way. Although even after cropping... meh. I guess you had to be there! :-) THANKS for the suggestion! I will try to find something interesting this week.

I like #1 as the mountains stand-out a little more.

Those are beautiful. You are making me think... I would really like to go back to Mono Lake someday!

I can think of two ways fix it:

One in Shutter Priority setting shutter speed to get the desired elongation of the swirls and accepting the resultant DOF.

The other in Manual, setting Aperture for DOF and shutter speed for elongation, same as above, then adjusting Contrast/Brightness or Levels or Curves in post.

... not sure that f/22 was necessary for that shot ...

This was quite a bright scene. If I had set the SS to a desired value of say 10-15s then the brightness of the image would have been increased a lot, and would be largely blown out. So of course I could then compensate and increase the F number to let less light in (but F22 was the max value). I could also make sure the ISO was at it's minimum setting, both of which I did.
However, despite doing that with such a long SS the image was completely blown out. So I had to reduce the SS to a shorter time.
The result was posted. So not blown out but the SS time, with 1.3s was less than desired.

Of course, if it is completely blown out you can't adjust in post

Got it - not sure what I was thinking with that post!