Critique me please (if you have time) :) Round 1

[Smokepole]

It looks like most of your shots were taken in pretty flat light.  It's difficult to take popping landscape photos in those conditions.  A polarizing filter would help, but there's no substitute for good natural light conditions. 

I keep the white balance on my 50d set to auto for good results.  I shoot jpeg files and they don't take too much tweaking if the light conditions are good.  I like to hunt for good light rather than rely on software to resurrect marginal photos.  It makes it more fun to me to "hunt" for shots.

Some of the shots don't seem sharp enough to me.  That could be motion blur... too slow shutter speed shot offhand would be my guess.  You can crank up the iso on the 70d without much noise.  That will allow faster shutter speeds and offhand shooting.  That big lens needs a 1/500 shutter speed to shoot offhand when it's fully extended.  Study your image data to make sure your speeds are adequate for that lens.

I do think your compositions are very nice.  I would like to see what your big lens can do in better light.  It gets excellent reviews.  Great shots! 

 

[PlateauNDN]

You shot   the yote with the wrong "weapon" or is there an "after" pic to go with the "before" pic.?    great pics and thanks for sharing.

[blacktailcody]

Haha these pictures were taken in Canada and there were houses behind him a little ways. 😜

[fishnfur]

  but snow often looks blue and purple in the shadows.  I like his re-work because of the bold darks and lights, but that is rarely how it works in nature

If you're looking at snow through cheap binoculars then yes snow often looks purple. Lateral color fringing ("chromatic aberration") is often purple In cheap glass, be it a camera lens or binoculars. 

My $300 canon 85mm f/1.8 exhibits a lot of purple fringing when shot wide open, and it usually disappears by f/2.5-2.8. It can also be corrected well in Lightroom 
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The general idea of that was looking with your "eyes" not with your brain (or glass w/ chromatic aberration).  Try it sometime without your lenses getting in your way. 

[Bean Counter]

Cody,
Here's what I came up with. When I opened the RAW file I was like "oh man" as the haze really limits the ability to recover colors and contrasts without looking overly edited. Your edits were pretty good considering what you started with. We've beaten the polarizer to death but I'd like to also echo Smokepole who is 100% about the best lighting conditions. Usually that's sunrise and sunset. That would have given the photo some much needed warmth--as much as I like the composition. What I really wanted to see was to try to bring out the reds in the trees, which I attempted to do the best I could with LR. CSx would offer more editing options. Just another view and I hope it helps 

[Smokepole]

That's quite a good fix.  I will have to give lightroom a try.  I've been using cs3, but I get lost sometimes, especially trying to fix photos.  Haze is way worse now than it used to be when i got my first slr back in the 80's.  I've noticed in September - October the atmosphere is good and clear.  Must be the angle of the sun...

Nice job Bean Counter.  I'll send you all my crappy photos from now on.   

[Netminder01]

Nice job Bean Counter.  I'll send you all my crappy photos from now on.   

 

I'm loading up an external hard drive now Bean. 

[Bean Counter]

You can do more with elements or photoshop than you can with Lightroom. But I'm lazy and stupid and appreciate Lightroom's intuitive controls and speed. 98% of anything I ever want to do to a photo is available in LR.

Definitely try out LR5 while you can get it free for 30 days. Then try out LR6 free for 30 days, too. 

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