Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
I liked this composition. I decided to take an infrared shot but I’m not sure that greatly affected the result. There was a small amount of camera movement . I blended in three different texture images before I got a fit.
Anything and everything.
ISO 100, 70mm, f/32, 1 second.
Hi Don, I like the composition, the twist of the branches around the ‘sun’. The dark part at the right side takes 1/3, in balance with the light 2/3 part at the left. The dark branch in the middle is like a dragon, reaching at the ‘sun’.
The lack of contrast and sharpness gives the picture a feeling of an old fashioned photo.
A bold image!
Ominous! Your arrangement of the elements is graceful. The contrast of that gracefulness with the darkness and OOF elements is interesting. It feels to me as if the dark trunk is taking up too much of the frame - it feels unbalanced. But now that I think about it, that goes with the ominous, uneasy feeling of this. I tried a crop, FWIW.
Henny, Bonnie, thank you both for commenting.
Bonnie, I tried a crop very much like that one and wound up going back to the original framing. Somehow the bulk of the tree trunk seems necessary to me. Although tomorrow I may decide it needs the crop. 
This one stopped me. I do like the treatment to give it a old, found film image. I lean towards Dan’s take on the crop being about right. The big, black trunk is dominating, though, I think the flow of the curves looks more natural. The tighter crop just seems a little abrupt. Nice, spooky image.
Don, great storytelling with this one! Love the strong visual flow created by the tree leading my eye from the upper right, then down, back up the thinner branch, and into the upper section of the image on the left. Very well done!
I get this strong impression of hypnagogia which is the transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. Lucid dreams and hallucinations are commonly experienced during this state.
Thanks, Alfredo.
You taught me a word I didn’t know! Seriously, some of us are at our most creative first thing in the morning, when we’re not fully awake. Maybe we’re in that state you describe.
Love this image, which I find to be spooky.
Thanks, Igor.
