Outdoor Photography Photo Critique

Your subject has some interesting elements and under a variety of conditions would serve up some incredible photo opportunities. You obviously saw something here that caught your eye and captured it for your future enjoyment and memory.

Overall, I think your composition is headed in the right direction. However, there is too much dark foreground at the bottom. If you cropped the bottom to just below where the water meets shadow the emphasis will be less on the bottom 1/3 or so and more on the subject (the lake). The horizon/lake level line is straight, an important consideration when there are horizontal lines that need to be straight.

Focus looks good. Foreground and background are sharp. There aren't a lot of minute details in this shot, so as long as the foreground and background boundaries/edges are defined you're all right.

Your exposure is good, though your sky is a little bright (overexposed). This is easily fixed in most image processing applications. A little darker sky and water surface will add to the mood of the scene and bring out more color in the sky. Alternately, you could increase the exposure and turn this scene into a high key rendition.

Overall, I like the kind of washed out tones and silhouette of the hills and foreground. Some would say it's kind of boring because of that and would insist on more color in the sky, more clouds, a red boat on the lake, or a more moody setting (i.e. fog). While I do agree with my statements, also, I think there is merit to this image on its own. Other options could be, as I mentioned under the exposure comments, to darken the sky a little.

Depth of field is good, encompassing foreground and background elements.

Paul, you captured a scene here that caught your eye while driving past. More often than not, this first impression is not the final image but a first step. I hope you spent a few minutes (or longer) here exploring other compositions, exposures, points of view, etc. On one hand, this is a good photograph expressing a certain mood and on the other hand is a record shot of a location you stopped at while traveling between destinations. Unfortunately, under those conditions we don't often have the luxury of waiting for conditions to "improve" and a decent photograph of an interesting location we may or may not get back to is another fine reminder of the trip.