Image Doctor says: Hi Julie… of all the places in the world a photographer can visit, Yosemite National Park in California is perhaps the most dangerous; they have forest fires there and bears that’ll rip open your tent and drag you away into the middle of the night. The biggest risk to a photographer though occurs after you leave the park… there’s every chance you will be savaged by a photography critic who will compare your photos to those of the great Ansel Adams. Don’t look for help from a park ranger if you get yourself caught in this situation!
OK, I am not going to compare this image to the work of Adams suffice to say that you do need to take control of the tonal range within this photo, something Adams was the absolute master of.
I know that you used a neutral grad filter when making this image but you have let the shadows get rather dark and muddy while letting the highlights (El Capitan and the sky) get rather light and pasty. Ideally you want to try and get some detail into the trees on the lower left but at the same time add more density and contrast into the mountain. The easiest way to do this is use the Shadows/Highlights tool in Photoshop; slide the Shadow control to 15%, the Highlight to 40% and it should look a lot better very quickly.
Now Julie, the original image you sent through to us had a big black border about the scene along with the words El Capitan, Yosemite © Julie Martin printed in bold type along the bottom. This treatment looks good on the wall of your home or office but it doesn’t work for a magazine format. Sadly I have also noticed a few photographers submitting prints into competitions with this treatment; they might think it gives a print some apparent commercial credo but it is more likely to get the print scored down or even pulled from the competition. In most competitions the author of a print should not be identifiable from the front of the photograph. As for the © symbol... when you are looking at a landscape as good as this, I think God is the one who should have dibs on copyright!
I hope you get a chance to go back to Yosemite to make some more landscapes; as Ansel Adams would surely attest, you can spend a lifetime there making photos.
El Capitan - as originally supplied
