Evening at Island Lake

Chad, the light on the peaks and the clouds is really nice. The details in the shadows looks good, but I don't think the lower half of the picture is doing you much good here. I don't find much in the lower half to lead my eyes around while the sharp peaks and clouds are do a good job of providing places for my eyes to rest and leading them between the highlights. One possible crop might be from the bottom almost to the base of the V in the mid-ground and from the right to past the peak of highest mtn. For me, that emphasizes that one well lit ridge and the cloud.

Hi Chad, I have come back to this three or four times...started a critique...then deleted it, again. Hoping someone will put their finger on this and explain what is happening. Mark did that. And inspired me to try again.

This has many fine contributing factors...the light on the peaks, the clouds on the left...the blueish haze that separates the back mtn from the foreground. And the rugged rolling rocks and water. I think the sum of the parts is not working towards a shared focal point or conclusion. ...gadz...now I sound like an english T.A. grading papers... and not a very good critique, at that. The lack of converging lines adds to the meandering feel of this. I would chalk this one up to a great capture of what was there and some are just that.

Great light on those peaks Chad. I can see where Mark and Ken are coming from. Lots of nice elements here that don't seem to be coming together in a strong way. My take on it would be to crop away about 1/4 from the right side as I feel that area is taking the power away from the image. Some selective dodging of the fg rocks and trees (perhaps around that small clump of trees around the rocks) would add just enough emphasis to create a lead up through the V shape of the rock line to the peak with the snow, which for me feels like the focal point of the image. A little bit more overall shadow detail would be nice too since about half of the image is in shadow.