Predawn in the mountains

[yeoshiki]

Hi all, I am an amateur. Just had my first DSLR camera 2 months ago. I took this photo in Taiwan. Woke up at 5am in the morning hoping to capture the sunrise. I woke up too early, but got a pleasant surprise. Some how this pre dawn photo came out better than the actual sunrise. No post processing was done.

1. in what area is critique to be sought?
Composition, color, exposure

2. what one hopes to achieve with the piece of work?
I am still quite unsure about exposures and the use of WB. I used auto white balance for this shot and aperture priority.

3. under what circumstance is the picture taken? (physical conditions/emotions)
I wanted to capture the various layers of mountains and also give a sense of pre dawn, where there is light from the houses and also light rays from the sun/moon etc.

4. what the critique seeker personally thinks of the picture
Somehow I feel like it might have been over exposed. The foreground could have been darker? But I really like the layers of mountains behind and the various tones of blue.

 

[ArcticFox]

Nice, I believe the photography is well exposed/ so is the colour. The only improvement I can think of would be the composition. Since the focus is on the lit house, I think you should zoom in more or you can crop it now.

 

[thelight]

nice shot for a AP and auto WB settings.
the mountain gives a 3 dimensional feel.
:thumbsup:

 

[candycaine]

Shift your frame a little bit to the right to get rid of the blue house (?) on the left-hand side of the frame and you have a pretty solid photo right there. The only issue I have is that the blue seems almost unrealistic- though I know nature is sometimes spectacular, you can consider desaturating the blue just that little bit.

 

[yeoshiki]

Thanks for the critique so far. I can never figure out how to use white balance at night or at dawn/evening so I always end up using auto. But I think I did take a RAW format of this image also.

I might just try using different WB on the RAW and see what gives the best effect. Do you guys think I might have lost some details in the clouds?

 

[lkkang]

nice shot.

I will take a few more shots ( with the same setting ) towards the right side.
Stitch them together to get a wider and more dramatic view of the scene.

well done,
Billy.

 

[ovaltinemilo]

just my input...feels that this kinda lanscape photos should be wider..the few huts at bottom can serve as anchoring elements...

 

[yeoshiki]

just my input...feels that this kinda lanscape photos should be wider..the few huts at bottom can serve as anchoring elements...

It was taken using a m43 format camera. I do agree that it should be wider, a pity I didn't study the camera manual well enough to use the panorma feature. What do you mean by anchoring elements? Care to elaborate?

 

[jaRv1s]

cloud details seems to be lost (to me with uncalibrated monitor)... or maybe next time you could try to lengthen the exposure time to get the moving cloud effect...

for panorama, it's quite tough for that time as light is changing very fast if you're doing 5 minutes exposure etc... if you go there really early and can make sure the exposure would be the same for all the 5 minutes shots... you can set WB to manual, focus to manual and start shooting...

for stitching can use freeware like Hugin...

good photo overall :thumbsup: