El Capitan Reflection

The light here is great but I don't think cutting off the very top of the mountain is working in your favour.

Great light and well composed, Jim! I like the lighting on the subtle colors.

Well done reflection shots are always a draw for me. I like this one. I blogged about reflections a few weeks back and one of my points was that while the classic reflection shot seems to always be symmetrical, sometimes there is more interest if they are not. I am not sure when I look at this one, about excluding the top of El Capitan. I am betting you took an image where it showed, and ultimately, liked this one better. It creates a certain tension -- otoh, it also draws my eye into to the reflection, which is, I think, a good thing. I would be interested to hear your thinking on this.

Beautiful reflection, though I also think the composition could be stronger with either more (including the top) or less of the cliff in the upper half.

Guy

Thanks for your feedbacks.

Andy, I considered of using classic symmetrical reflection composition, however, I felt it would divide viewer's attention. I wanted the reflection as focus. In additional, for this scene I felt not show entire El Capitan adds sense of its height. I also include bright triangle as pointer to the reflection.

Guy, as I explained above about not showing more of the top. I considered of removing part of top. But I struggled with cropping. I didn't think cropping out tree tops would work. What is your opinion?

Thanks

Jim,

Thought I would chime in and tell you that I like the composition. I think you succeeded in making the reflection the main subject; and still showed the grandeur of El Cap. As far as cropping any more from the top, if it were mine, I wouldn't. You would have to crop well in to the trees and then go until you cropped out the sky too. That could certainly work as an alternate, but it's a completely different image. I think this works well as presented. Wish it were bigger though!

Lon

Very nice shot Jim. I would include the top of El Capitan in this photo other than that great
photo

-zaynab

Lon, thank you for the input and analysis. You are right that cropping out sky would give a different feel to the image. By doing that, I think the lighted tree top on the LHS would become more predominant. And RHS dark area would be over bearing as well. Either lighten that area or cropping out portion of it.

About posting a larger size, I always have trouble with a vertical shoot until it is too late. I wish we can edit photo link even after the photo has been posted.