Hello everyone!

   I shot this photo last year, August 2023, in South Africa (Bredasdorp).

I was driving inside these fields of rapeseed which give a beatiful yellow-green contrast.

My main goal was to create a simple and essential panorama with few colours and a sort of geometrical appearance.

I post-processed the picture in Lightroom with some colour corrections and resizing and then in Photoshop to add some contrast.

Many thanks for your review and comments!

Matteo

Matteo welcome all I can do is give you my take on your fine image. I tend to want to see that 3D look. I first used Nik Tools Tonal Contrast - Some dodge and burn work in the clouds. Last Topaz AI sharpen with noise reduction.

Matteo,

Thank you for sharing the photo with us in Critique.   The South African scene looks much like some in western Canada.  Small world! 

I think the photo is fine as it is.  It's minimalist, and geometrical, and the blue/gold colour harmony is pleasing to the eye.  If it were mine to edit I would try the usual experiments like flipping left to right, cropping, turning upside down to study balance and flow, and changing the proportions of land and sky.  Your composition shows a thin sliver of land and a lot of sky, which tells the viewer that the sky is the more important element. The wispy clouds have a nice, summer feeling.  Good weather ahead for the farmers. 

I love to edit, so I tried a version with more land and less sky for a different balance.  I don't suggest that it's better . . .  only different.   I didn't crop anything - just stretched the foreground and compressed the sky with Photoshop's 'Edit>Transform>Scale' tool.  I made the frame 16:9.  Panoramic compositions can suggest wide open spaces and vast landscapes, and also give a feeling of calm to an image. 

. . . . Steven, senior critic

Many many thanks daniel and Steven.

I'll apply your advices!

Matteo

The problem with these images is that today you can create any sky possible with AI. The images are absolutely mass-produced and can be produced by any layman. You will also rarely see whether an image was created with or without AI. For this reason, our eyes are now oversaturated with these motifs and curators may have rejected them without looking at them for a particularly long time. When I look at it longer I wonder where the light comes from that creates the strong shadows. No sun or its light source can be seen. The left half of the image should be significantly brighter or hazier than the right, at this wide angle? Overall, I think the motif of the mountains is too small and too far away. Either minimalistic but with fewer clouds and fewer colors. Or a nature shot but then a lot more subject please.

Ok, thanks Steffen.

I agree with you about the resizing of the picture (as said in previous comments).

Regarding a minimalistic sky, considering that it's not generated by AI (fortunately I was there when I shot the image) I don't like too much adding or delete persons, objects, etc.

Thanks

Matteo