Mountain Bike Sunset

[Photo-John]

What do you think of this? Is it too dark? Too busy? I like it but it's a tad out of my comfort zone and I'd like some other opinions.



Technical details:
Canon EOS T4i / 650D with 18-135mm IS STM kit lens
1/1600th second @ f/8 and ISO 800

Looking at my exposure information, I see I could have gone down a stop on the ISO. I was more concerned about the quickly dropping sun at that moment, though. And right before I'd been shooting tighter photos where I need that fast shutter speed.

There was a fair amount of post-processing on this photo, too. I shot for the highlights and then did a bunch of shadow and highlight recovery on the RAW file in Lightroom; followed but masked curves and levels adjustment layers in Photoshop for fine-tuning.

Thanks for your suggestions

[mattb]

Looks great. I shoot like that too - exposing for highlights and relying on dynamic range and processing to bring the shadows back. Looks like you had plenty of DR to work with there and I don't see any side-effects.
The sun on one side and the flowers on the other creates a nice frame of light for the middle including the riders. Works very well!

[Photo Dad]

I'd like to see the foreground ridge with the flowers and cyclists a little brighter. Higher up where the cyclists are, the sun is still shining, although in the valley it is already twilight. I'd also like to know if others agree with me.

What do you think of this? Is it too dark? Too busy? I like it but it's a tad out of my comfort zone and I'd like some other opinions.Technical details:Canon EOS T4i / 650D with 18-135mm IS STM kit lens1/1600th second @ f/8 and ISO 800Looking at my exposure information, I see I could have gone down a stop on the ISO. I was more concerned about the quickly dropping sun at that moment, though. And right before I'd been shooting tighter photos where I need that fast shutter speed. There was a fair amount of post-processing on this photo, too. I shot for the highlights and then did a bunch of shadow and highlight recovery on the RAW file in Lightroom; followed but masked curves and levels adjustment layers in Photoshop for fine-tuning. Thanks for your suggestions

[Photo-John]

I'd like to see the foreground ridge with the flowers and cyclists a little brighter. Higher up where the cyclists are, the sun is still shining, although in the valley it is already twilight. I'd also like to know if others agree with me.

I'll try one with the rider a bit lighter. However, I played with this a lot, including making the foreground brighter and it didn't feel natural to me. I'll give it another shot though and post it here so other people can see and tell me what they think.

Thanks for the feedback, Dad!

[GB1]

PJ - I see some good things here. The progression of the three riders, the harmony of them in the field of flowers, and the power of the sun in the background. The bottom rider's a tad too close to the edge of the frame for comfort (for me): nothing you can do about it now, but you can mitigate it by cropping off some of the right side to make the distance between left and right a little more even. Just make sure to leave a little extra space on the right for progression. The sun isn't an ideal shape here, I think I would have used a smaller aperture to get more burst instead of a ball (but sometimes, it seems, even smaller apertures produce a ball like sun on digital sensors. Somehow, sensors can't deal with the sun that well). Finally, try bumping up the saturation a little.

G