By Mark Dafey.
I arrived at my hotel late at night – too late to see the view outside my window – and resolved to get up early, knowing the sun would rise from behind the mountain across the lake. The view over Umiam Lake in Meghalaya, India, at dawn was better than I’d anticipated. Fishermen were out in canoes that they’d paddle slowly across the water.
Canon EOS 20D; EF70-200mm f/2.8 USM 2x converter; 1/2500s; f/8; ISO100
Don’s response
There are so many elements of this image that I like: the sinuous line of the lake shore across the middle of the picture, the four distinct reflections, the trees and, above all, the figure in the boat.
Combined they give Mark Dafey’s picture a serenity and timelessness entirely appropriate to the subject.
While I think the trees left are an important element, the rest of the immediate foreground is mildly distracting.
Perhaps by setting the bottom crop just below the point at which the line of the water and the foreground intersect in the bottom right corner, he could decrease the featureless foreground without upsetting the overall balance.
