Another picture postcard

[Ray]

You guys have been so helpful, I thought I'd try you out on another image from which I'm suffering some indecision with regard to cropping.

It's from Poon Hill again, taken a bit earlier than the previous shot, showing the first flush of dawn on the mountain peaks.

This is not stitched, but two shots bracketed (1/6th sec and 1/60th sec exposure at 30mm).

The first cropping I attempted was as follows; just the sky, leaving all the trees and foliage as a base for the composition.

[attachment=1590:attachment]

But the more I looked at it, the more I thought that perhaps the 'base' is too dominant and is distracting from the main point of the shot; the mountain peaks.

Dhaulagiri at 8,167m is bang in the centre. The skyline of the foliage sort of mirrors the skyline of the peaks. There's a certain symmetry there. But perhaps the peaks should be more dominant, so I cropped the image as follows.

[attachment=1591:attachment]

Not sure about this. What do you think? Any comments on tonality issues would also be welcome. Should the sky be darkened, a bit more azure for example, or perhaps lightened?.

I so rarely get up early enough to see a dawn, I've forgotten what the sky looks like at that time of day   .

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I prefer the first cropping. The line of trees echos the line of the mountains nicely, and the color of the early sun on the mountains is powerful enough to more than make up for the larger expanse of green foliage. I wouldn't change a thing!

"First flush of dawn?" That's about noon, isn't it?  

[Ray]

"First flush of dawn?" That's about noon, isn't it?   
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Yes! When I communicate with you guys on the other sie of the globe   .

[wolfnowl]

I agree that the first is better.  In the second, the trees look as if they're in the way, not really part of the picture.  The first has more balance.  Nice shot, BTW.

Mike.



"First flush of dawn?" That's about noon, isn't it?

I used to volunteer to teach at a Mississauga High School course called 'Earth Odyssey'.  One of the things I did was to get all of the kids up for sunrise at least once.  And they thought 4:00 only happened once a day...

[jule]

Ray, I had a very quick play and came up with a couple of alternatives for consideration.

The first is a crop to remove just a bit of the foreground, without making the treetops look severed -
[attachment=1592:attachment]

The second is a very, very poor cloning job of removing the tree - just to get an idea of how the tree line can mirror the mountain range - without the tree on the left.
[attachment=1593:attachment]

Julie

[Ray]

The second is a very, very poor cloning job of removing the tree - just to get an idea of how the tree line can mirror the mountain range - without the tree on the left.
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Hi! Jule,

Yes. I suppose there's a whole range of cropping options between the two extremes that I posted. Cloning out the tree on the left seems to improve the symmetry. On the other hand, perhaps I should just crop out the tree as follows.

[attachment=1594:attachment]

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

I'll go with Julie's second version. I like removing the tree, but cropping it makes the picture feel too cramped for me.

It's a powerful image, well worth trying lots of variants.

[rvanr]

I prefer the first crop. In the second one the trees attract even more attention though they occupy less space in the frame.