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,

Norwegian dream

For the last two weeks I’ve been doing some renovations in my garden. I've finally repaired the electrics and we now have light and power in the 3 little garden huts again 😊 But no time for hiking or photo tours ☹

So , here‘s a blast from the past.
A photo taken with the good old Nikon D90 in 2010. a shot that I called “Norwegian dream”

I printed this on canvas quite big (about 120 x 90cm) and donated it to the local public sauna. It's been on display in the relaxing room there for over 13 years :-)

And rightly so. This is wonderful composition with the pattern in the rocks complementing the pattern in the clouds. The rocks draws the eye back to the mountains and the clouds brings the eye back full circle. The reflections all to that.

Shell Creek Canyon

I opened the thread/photo and immediately thought, wow, very serene and dynamic at the same time.

Nice shot!!
I might have raised the shadows just a touch. Just enough to give a little more visible detail in the dark areas without destroying your nice contrast of that scene.

Many thanks :-)

Another sunset today. New to me, feedback appreciated

Reaching back a couple years to a favorite spot I've posted from before.

Three lighthouses:

1. Coquille River Lighthouse
   

2. Heceta Head
   

3. Yaquina Head
   

That's a beautiful red colour you've captured here.
If I were looking for possible edits,... You could leave it symmetrical as in the original post, or you could emphasize that great red by cropping somewhat.
Cropping woul give the opportunity to move the horizon down and placing the sun in an image "power point", more off centre. The layers of mountains would become bigger on the screen and show more details.

Maybe like this ?

Thanks FP.

I get the edit. I was reluctant to crop too far because I thought I was losing detail but that's not too bad.

My question was more on tips for taking sunsets - filters or other techniques.

OK, if I look at your settings ISO 800 looks too high to me. With this ISO, you had to make the SS really fast (1/800), and close the aperture down to f8 (which is already where diffraction on a m4/3 system starts to raise its head, and starts to reduce detail)
With ISO 800, you'll also get more noise because less total light (fast SS & closed down lens) reaches the sensor, but perhaps more importantly it also reduces the DR available for the image quite a bit, meaning that the shadow detail will be lacking while the highlights are more easily saturated.
In this case the foreground works like a silhouette which is artistically fine, but, maybe in other cases, you might want to open up some shadow detail and so base ISO would help in such cases.
Often when shooting straight into the sun you'll get "problems" with flare. Different lenses handle flare differently, I can't see any here, so the lens looks pretty good, or perhaps you removed it in PP ? Flare can also be used to add an "artistic flare" to an image, so it is not always bad.

IMO, with modern cameras the DR is so high that the effect of (most) filters can be simulated as required in PP. A graduated ND filter might have been suggested in the past and would have probably worked here OK in this particular shot , but imagine if there had been some interesting foreground element (maybe a tree or a building) that reached out and up into the red sky. An ND Grad filter would have made that element unnecessarily darker too.

Thanks.

I need to learn to think more about my settings. The 800 ISO is my default for flying insects / birds to get a fast enough SS with my long zoom. I have a habit of set and forget as the long lens is attached 99% of the time. I remember dropping ISO and opening aperture on the 12-60 for a street setting some time back but forgot this time...

A little bit of mist or low hanging cloud can do wonders to a scene!
Normally the air around us is invisible, but with the some mist that air becomes visible, adding depth and interest to an image.

In the first shot you have the tree on the left and the lower grassy part of image adding foreground interest and depth. The atmospheric mist in the background extends that depth. All those soft greens and the diagonal lines of trees disappearing at the top of the hill work very well.

In the second shot there's no foreground as such, but the low hanging cloud takes over the job of adding a lightweight 3D structure that provides depth and since we can imagine it blowing gently in the breeze it also adds some movement too.

3 very nice looking lighthouses!
Striking red colour in the first. That band of clouds adds a nice touch to the composition.

I think my favourite here is number 2. The lighthouse has a higher vantage point, it must be well visible right into the distance. Looks like it's a more comfortable job for the light house keeper too ;-)
The ambient light is getting low and the lighthouse has just switched on.
I would have liked to see a little more of the sea, with its waves, surrounding the peninsular; to give that important "wedge shaped image element" a little more room to breathe.
Looks like it is popular place for the birds ;-)

Excellent point on the second, should have snapped more of the sea and less of the trees.

1 isn't as structurally pleasing as 2 or 3, but while they are perched on a rocky hillside, 1 has a pristine sandy beach right next to it. Getting that light going, then stretching your legs on the beach under the stars must have been divine.