First kiss

A fine image Vlad and the touches of morning light accent the scene very nicely. Great job getting out on the ice and capturing this one. My only wish is more ice in the fg. What I mean by that is the plane is more straight on rather than on an angle incorporating more ice. It seems your were trying to incorporate more sky in this comp, if so, then Im cool with that
Also just make sure you have some detail in the blacks.
Thanks for sharing this beautiful landscape

First, I love the composition. I love the diagonals created by the cracks in the ice and how that tells us it is ice instead of liquid water, and the clouds in the sky which are water vapor.

I also love the colors and dynamic range, with the fire of the setting or rising sun, whichever, but the energy force that is behind these various forms of water.

The problem I have with it, which for me is a show-stopper, unfortunately, is sharpness of focus. As to the root cause of that, and I could be wrong, after looking at this for awhile in the larger version, I don't think it probably had as much to do with the focal setting of the lens at f/16 and 19mm as much as with the 0.5s / ISO 100.

It would have been interesting to see what trading off three stops in ISO might have done versus shutter speed in this one.

My 2 cents.

thanks. Appreciate it.

Anthony - comletely makes sense and you are right, i was after a particular composition, looking for crack lines matching clouds with mountain at the intersection. Sun light was unexpected addition. By then i already spend 1.5 hours with wide angle, mostly ice composition and got tired of them :)

John - right , I suppose you are talking about details in the cloud. Ice and mountain seem to be detailed enough, i measured front plane by looking at snow texture in cracks at 1:1 magnification. I do regret a lot i didn't take multiple exposures with faster shutter speed to get clouds better. And you did get onto the key story which played in my mind too - water in all forms and shapes.

Vlad, I like this scene and enjoy the early morning light and colors very much. I think the clouds look great and I especially like the cracks in the ice leading back to the mountains. Some nice reflected color across the ice too. Your larger version looks very nice to me. Good work!

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

A beautiful moment in an epic scene. Well done!

The image looks plenty sharp to me. My concern is with the sky and the odd variations of color, did you happen to be using a polarizing filter that caused this effect?

I think the scene is worthy, unfortunately the light here is just flat. There may have been ways around that, but even with better light the comp here isn't gonna work--for starters the 2/5 land sky split is just uncomfortable. Sorry for being so rough, but ive seen enough of your work that I know this is not in the same league.

Stan - no question your feedback is always (!) welcome and valuable, i am happy you spent time articulating it. thanks again.

Zack - no, no polarizer. But that must be processing artifacts, the clouds coming out of RAW development were too blue, so i attempted to warm them up and lighten upper right corner, which was initially very dark. Any recommendations what to avoid or fix ?

Love how it leads into the dramatic sky! If it was mine I might consider pulling out some guide lines and use "warp" to straighten the horizon line.

Viad, this is fanstastic! I like the leading lines, strong cloud formation, and the touch of pink.