Bear Lake

Yesterday morning surely was much better than today's - was there at RMNP to witness the first light on Hallett's peak from Bear lake. My first sunrise out there - C&C is greatly appreciated , learn a lot from this from forum everyday.

A few minutes earlier ..

#3

These are all nice pics but they won't get too much attention in this group since there have been so many images of Hallett reflected in Bear, Nymph, Dream, etc. It needs to have something different about it to stand out. In this case, the images suffer from cloudless skies and lack of a perfect reflection. Of course, those are things you can't control, so it's just a matter of going back however many times is necessary to get that spectacular shot. Looking at the weather forecast can help...obviously you never know how the sunrise will look until you get there, but if it calls for perfectly clear skies, it might be better to sleep in or attempt some shots from a different location that doesn't rely so much on a good sky. As for composition, I think I might have moved a little forward and to the right on the last one to give a little more space between the bottom of the reflection and the rock and a little more space between the tree and the peak.

You found some really nice light. The comps are pretty nice, especially the last one. On thing that immediately jumps out at me is the post-processing. It seems that you did not use an ND grad (physical or digital, so the contrast was too high for the sensor to handle. If you have photoshop or similar program, I would recommend you double-process the images and blend them. Thanks for posting.

Ditto what Grant said. I have been there several times and still haven't captured that "perfect" image so I'll keep going back until I do.

One thing about critiques to help you grow....the first time I ever posted a picture to the forum, the critiques were a little tough to take. Here I thought I had this great image and the feedback wasn't what I hoped for. It was probably the best learning tool I've ever experienced! I took the feedback, changed the way I did things and subsequent images were better...more feedback...got better....more feedback..you get the point I'm making here. You have great potential and the folks from this and other forums will help you bring out the best in your work. Keep submitting, apply the feedback and watch what begins to happen to your work...you will be astonished!!

I kind of disagree with Grant & Jack. I think the problem here is not hte subject, just the blcoky shadows which youre going to get unless you use a blending of multiple exposures, or a grad filter. And even that is only an issue for me in #1 and #2, i think the shadows actually enhance #3, becuase its more of a silhouette (as opposed to the open forests in the background of the first two shots) I thin the only thing #3 needs to be great is more sharpness--it looks like the focus may have been on the trees up front and not the background, or maybe just needs more web sharpness (plenty of tutorials here on that) Looks like a beautiful morning, thanks for sharing!

Thanks Grant, Momo, Jack and Stan.
Yes - I know that there must have been a thousand posts on this in this forum , but I really wanted to know my issues and critiques on it to get a better pic.
Thanks a lot for the feedback - I did use though a 2 stop soft GND on all the shots.
Yes - I have just started the journey here - will go back to the park again and again , loved the morning light out there - it was really an amazing experience.
I was there in RMNP again today and saw some wonderful Bighorn sheep with their babies.