Twilight

The balance of this image struck me immediately. All the elements (subject, composition, timing, technical execution) are lined up and work well together. The shapes of the birds, their feathers, some semi-translucent against the sky, looking like two very different birds, primitive, delicate and yet the one in flight more menacing. The colour is a lovely balance too of orange and tobacco lending an intimacy to the scene which evokes the feeling of beginning or becoming. The echo of the rocks in the foreground and the mountains in the background adds to the image's composition, strengthening its power to hold the eye. On a technical note, it is more challenging to capture motion in low light and you clearly pre-visualised this, reasoned the particulars and set the camera up accordingly to capture what you intended.

This is an uncommonly seen angle of Reynis Fjara which is a bonus on one had. On the other, I might chide you for daring the brave fatal waters to get to this point. People die on this beach every year. Tourist's foolishness with Icelandic nature costs lives and the taxpayers and the emergency services (which are run by volunteers). That said, the colours are delicate and sublime, accentuated by the movement in the foreground from the long exposure. The shadow texture keeps on the rocks is subtle. I encourage you to revisit this photograph and address the magenta fringing on the edges of the rocks. If you use Lightroom, this is as simple as a click away. The composition is balanced with the horizon, foreground and the rocks in the distance. Iceland makes a stunning subject which anyone can photograph and have a decent image, but you have done much more than that here.

I love the feeling of this image especially given what has been going on in the UK these past three years. The border however is not my favourite. In my opinion it detracts from the image and is the only reason it was not listed in the top 10. These borders have become over used in recent iterations of camera and filter software that they have lost their impact. In this case it also feels discordant with the freneticism of the image. This might seem counterintuitive given that when these kinds of borders were first etched into negative carriers, photographers meant to give a more organic finish to their images, and move away from the clean lines of the easel blades. I wonder if this is an in camera JPEG? If so I would encourage you to develop the RAW (even if it isn’t an in camera JPEG) and work on bring out more in the shadow of the buildings. My other favourite part is the balance of the tones and colours, they are beautiful. Especially the clocktower face with it’s green ‘hat’ against the blue sky.

The colour caught my eye, then the composition and the textures. I love the way the colours are all shades of green and celadon, wrapped around each other in the fog the way the moss and branches wrap themselves around each other. This image has a fairytale quality to it and though the colours are verging on hyper-real, they are not so overly processed as to be the visual equivalent of harsh German power noise industrial music turned up to volume 11. Most of what I see in HDR is unfortunately exactly that. An assault on the visual senses so violent that one can only seek refuge inside one's own eyelids.

I love the colour palette here. The subtlety of the pinks and oranges blending with the browns and blues are sublime. The movement of the waves and the clouds echo each other creating a soft motion which contrasts against the stationary rocks. The horizon of the image feels a little bit off to me, pulling my senses to the left and down. This might not be the actual horizon, but just a choice made given all the elements.