Took this shot at Little Grass Valley Reservoir in the Plumas National Forest. The geese came out just a dusk to feed. They were mere feet from me.

Thoughts on this shot? Too much dark? Composition could be better? What am I missing here?

I might be tempted to try a little more sky and a little less of that black foreground?

A shot with a lot in it. I think the post processing is a bit too heavy. I presume you did vignetting which is too heavy on the bottom for me. I lightened the photo up in PS and when the bottom part is lighter for me tht improves the shot and the composition because now the bottom geese are half visible and the rocks are lost.
Can you post the original one?

i really like this one with the exception of the rocks and the 2 geese at the front. They kind of get lost. Otherwise i think it's a great scene and i quite like the processing.

So, I guess you'd all be surprised if I said I didn't process this one hardly at all. I don't usually process photos anyway. I did a quick contrast/color correct and a sharpening, but that was it...and it's what I do on nearly all my photos.

The "vignetting" is quite possibly due to the wide angle used along with the lighting to either side of the shot. If I moved the view just inches either way, the scene went completely black.

Thanks for the comments.

wow those corners are very dark considering it's a effect of the lens. Do you have this in other shots with this lens, or is it just apparent on this one?

I have quite a few shots with the lens and the effect is typically present, but I'm not sure if it's the lens or the light. The shots I see it on are ones without even lighting, like landscapes, which is what I use it on. For example:



Notice the effect on the top right, but it doesn't appear on the left. In this shot, I was also using a CPL and in neither shot was I using the lens hood.

So, I don't get it, but the effect is not added.

Thanks,

Chad

Showing more of the dark on either side of the original view, here's another example. You can see how dark it got on the left. The star in the sky is the same one.

Interesting. The extent of the vignetting seems to really change over the shots. I didn't notice the big changes on my old wide-angle, although it was present to a lesser degree.

Filters will exacerbate the effect. It might be wise to leave off the filter.

Polarisers and wide angle lenses can cause uneven polarisation (because polarisers are about the angle to the light and that's then changing significantly), where you get a darker sky on some parts of the image than others. Given that it grows as you pan the image round, I'm pretty sure that's what we're seeing again. What were you trying to get from the polariser, out of curiosity?

As it is I think it's a nice image but touch soft and feels a little harsh, maybe a little overprocessed. Less is more (and probably a gentle grad ND on the sky, too much and the reflection becomes brighter than the source which is a bit of a give-away!) could produce a stronger image for me, I think.

Which image are you referring to? Neither of the "good" photos was processed, a touch auto lighting and color, but that's it. I used the CPL on the lake/mountain shot, the last one and was looking to enhance the blue sky and cut through the glare of the water. It was near noon, which could contribute to the harsh lighting.

I didn't use a filter on the geese shot at the top and also didn't process much, hardly at all.

You can get quite a dramatic range of sky colours post-sunset or pre-sunrise. Here's one of mine:

http://www.pwtphoto.com/landscapes/slid ... 0_9128.jpg

No filters of any kind and no vignette added in post.