Sky Line

[Heather]

Hello.
I am new to photography and to this site. I was recommended to try this site out for great critiques. So here is my first photo for the site. I took it with my Sony Digital camera. I didn’t edit the picture other than the size. Let me know what you think.

Thanks.

[mattp]

Hi Heather, welcome to the site.

The colour of the sky is beautiful, I can see why you were tempted to take the shot. The image looks quite soft on my screen, I don't know if that is because of the way you have posted or scanned it, but I think the tree needs to be very sharp for this to work.

I also think that the lower part of the image becomes quite confused - the other trees are getting in the way and distracting from the main one, which feels as if it has been severed rather abrubtly when you get down to the trunk.

If possible I would have suggested finding a composition that isolated the tree against that backround, to make it stand out rather more as the focal point. Also you might want to consider whether other parts of the scene would have helped to lead your eye towards the tree. Sometimes, rather than being given everything all at once, it can feel more rewarding if your eye does a little travelling around the image before it reaches your main focal point.

Just my thoughts, hope there is something helpful there.

I look forward to seeing more,

regards,

matt

[Chunk]

Nice work Heather and welcome. I like that the darker blues are repeated in the top part of the frame and that the bands of color continue top to bottom. Resizing of photos for posting usually softens them and they require sharpening (the unsharp mask effect can do a good job of it) to restore the original look of the shot. Here's a good description of it.
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutori...ding-usm.shtml

[jar_e]

Heather,

Welcome to the boards and nice first shot. My only critique to add would be cloud wall on the bottom half. It makes the shot more busy and wrecks that beautiful orange/pink. If you got closer to the tree and did a shot of looking up, I think you could get an effective shot of great sky and a nice silhouette.

Nice shot and welcome,

Jared