This is a photo taken at Dove Stone Reservoir, which is found near Saddleworth Moor, Oldham, England. I was trying to capture the lone tree against the steep mountain-side backdrop, so I zoomed across the reservoir as far as I could.
Thank you to everyone for your comments. I have attached the original and untouched image, which is straight from the camera apart from resising from 2500 pixels high to 640 pixels high.
From this image, you can see how I've changed the image after a few minutes of photoshop work. I don't normally do anything in photoshop other than adjusting levels and saturation, etc, but for this image, I did a bit more. I added a completely different sky from another image from the same day, and I've also darkened the water and rotated the image by 0.5 degrees. This still doesn't make the image a great one, but I think it's an imporovement over what was in the camera, and I guess that's the main reason why I posted it.
As I was composing the shot, when I correctly exposed the landscape, the sky turned out completely washed out. When I correctly exposed the sky, the landscape was completely black! :-( This is why I couldn't quite get the image right (as you can see in the attached picture). I have been looking into ways of fixing this type of problem at the photo-taking stage, so I've bought a Cokin graduated ND Filter, so I hope this helps. Does anyone have any other tips for fixing this type of thing? Thanks.
To Mark: Hi there, and thanks for the cropping suggestion. I won't play around with this image any more, but I will try and take the picture again, using your advice. I am interested to see how it comes out, and am looking forward to another trip there! ) Thanks.
To Keith: I guess I just wanted too much in the shot, so maybe a landscape shot would have worked out better than the portrait one - though I thought the portrait shot might have worked better with the mountains. I took the photo from a footpath, so there was nowhere else to go which was higher (and accessible) behind me. By the way, those white dots by the tree are sheep! I took a load of shots on this day, but I was having problems with geting the sky and landscape both correctly exposed in the same shot, so most of them have this problem. I'll have to go to this very nice location once again (with my Cokin fiters) when I come back from holiday in a few weeks (I'm going to Majorca on Saturday morning!). Maybe I'll pass you some time when you've got your EOS 1D! ;-)
To Evangelos: Thanks for you advice and tips, I would like to try and visit this location again to try some of the ideas I've had for this photo, thanks.
Thanks again to everyone, and I hope someone has some good tips to share with me about the sky/landscape exposure problem.
The crop is obviously an issue, but given the limitations you couldn't have done anything else. What I'd try to improve is the color saturation. The weather does not help unfortunately.
I agree with Mark about the crop, the water doesn't really add anything to the shot. Was is possible to get a little higher in order to bring the tree lower, away from the wall and distant conifers? That might have made the tree stand out more.
I find the landscape here is not helping with the composition, there are lines breaking the photo up into sections, and nothing to lead the eye.
I'd like to see some of the other shots you took round about here, to try and find a better viewpoint. I must admit I've not visited this spot, but it will be on my list once I have a camera again.
Greetings from the colonies! Good job with your Canon. I think on this one I might have cropped off to photo halfway between the water and the tree. Looks like great country! I'd like to visit some day.
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) Thanks. 