Cliff edge over city lights

I believe its lacking a lot and has too much “empty” space but I feel stuck trying to move forward. The scene was not well planned and is set up weird, I’m starting to think the whole scene needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Any thoughts and critiques are appreciated.



Well, I think it has makings of a nice image :slight_smile:
What I would try myself:
-Bring the main character, and the cliff bit closer, they could take bigger percentage of the image.
-The main character could perhaps be tilted bit more towards the city lights, if that’s where she’s looking?
-Mountain range could be bit smaller/lower, now, for my impression they look bit too big, thinking how far they are supposed to be.
-The city lights are nice detail, but I think they would give more, if they wouldn’t been blurred out. (maybe you need higher resolution there) As the mountains are not blurred, I think neither should them, as they are closer.

There are a few things I’d like to point out:
The mountains have some incredibly sharp and pointed peaks, which should be rounded off.
The lighting is incredibly flat - there doesn’t even seem to be shadows in this scene, what are you lighting it with?
It appears there are roads running into the mountain.
Composition-ally, this isn’t too bad - my eyes were drawn directly to the woman on the cliff, and nothing else particularly stood out and took my attention away from her.
The texturing for the cliffs themselves are done well, except for some visible texture stretching on the right side, and I like the strands that are hanging off the cliff itself.
I think that distant mountain and the lighting are what need the most work here. Try and see if you can find a good night sky HDR to begin with the lighting.

Will I think it’s pretty amazing, and very clever of you to make it this way, but I was wondering, why put the mountains in front of the land if it’s going to be behind it, but yet it’s awesome One thing I would only say, and it’s that you should give the moon a bit worm light so we get to feel like if there is a moon

Crop the shot hard on both the left and right sides. A little bit of cliff on the left. Right side cut just right of the moon. Get the camera in closer. How about a reverse over-the-shoulder (OTS) shot with the moon in the upper right of the frame and the city below? Add a vertical gradient so that the city-lights are brighter in the distance and maybe use the same gradient to very-slightly add blur.

Exploit the idea of “city street lines” so that the final shot starts by looking (OTS) at the interesting lady, slides down to explore the street lines, then loops up to admire the moon before returning to the lady in a nice, pleasing, circular sweep of the eye. The fact that she is on a cliff is realized by looking beneath her and seeing that the rock shelf ends at her feet.

A little yellowish spotlight coming in from very low could suggest that there is a warm campfire nearby, while also adding a little color-contrast to what is otherwise a cool, bluish scene.