I found this colorful firweed growing above Peyto Lake and liked the contrast with the Aqua water of the lake. Taken with Canon AE-1P, 28 mm f2.8, Gitzo 1325/Arca Swiss B1, polariser, exp about 1/4 @ f16 on Royal Gold 100. As well as critique, any hints on how to compress below 50 K appreciated, I can avoid JPEG squigglies at 60-70K, but not always at 50. I resized to 500 pixels wide before compression.

-- Chris Ross (chrisx2@loxinfo.co.th), September 28, 2000

Answers

Chris,

You have chosen a tough subject--Peyto Lake is an often photographed subject, so you really have to do something different to get one that stands out.

Your shot has potential, but it has a key flaw--the tree right behind the fireweed that obscures the lake. For me, it really kills what is otherwise a very nice composition.

-- Mark Erickson (mark@westerickson.net), September 28, 2000.

I agree with the above. Next time, bring a small pruning saw.

-- Dan (foo@bar.com), September 28, 2000.

I think the color contrast would have caught my eye, too. But this image doesn't work for me. There is too much between the vivid red and the aqua lake to play the contrast.
I don't know the location, so I don't know what is off to the left. How about turning 90 degrees and from a slightly lower angle? Would this let you get the red against the aqua with the tree on the right to provide reference and framing?

John Thurston
Juneau, Alaska

-- John Thurston (john_thurston@my-deja.com), September 29, 2000.

Chris, the colors are so vivid here, that it looks like a handpainted postcard from the 40s. I'm sure the scene was this vibrant, it's just a hard subject do anything subtle with. I personally don't have much trouble with the tree location and I like the long diagonal view down the valley from the tree. But as a previous post said, it's a tough contrast situation between all the elements.

-- Mike Green (greenplay@hotmail.com), September 30, 2000.

Agree with the above -- the colors here are such that it appears unnatural, and the tree does hurt the composition. Can't tell what sort of light was present; appears to be perhaps an overcast day, am I right? Using a different timbre of light may have helped the colors; say, pre-dawn or post-sunset twilight, or even early morning or late afternoon sun.

As for compression/scanning tips: it helps not to have to resize. I scan my slides at 400 dpi, which puts them out slightly larger than 550 pixels wide. I do my cropping in Photoshop, save it as a TIFF file first, then save it as a 7-quality JPEG; I usually get a file size of around 48 Kb and JPEG artifacts are nary to be found. If the file ends up being too big I save it as a 6-quality JPEG (but never lower than that). Most of the pics on my website, http://members.aol.com/cldphot o/, are under or around 50 Kb and are (AFAIK) free of those little sprites.

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), October 02, 2000.

well, I managed to typo the address above, but the link should work ok. Shouldn't be a space in "cldphoto."

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), October 02, 2000.

In my opinion the image doesn't work because it's a compromise. On the one hand there's a pretty respectable landscape of the lake and surrounding mountains from here ( I do know the location) but you have to include the tops of the mountains on the left and avoid the messy trees in the foreground. Some directional light and a bit of a sky is prefererable to what looks like the very flat light you had, though I appreciate that it's not an easy place to drive back to.

On the other hand there's a picture of fireweed.

The problem is that you've attempted to combine both in one image, and the need to squeeze in the fireweed prevents you from composing the landscape properly. I think a minute or two thinking about your objective for the shot would have helped you.

-- david henderson (hendersons@online.rednet.co.uk), October 08, 2000.