I appreciate the comments and honest feedback on my last post. Here’s a little more quiet image compared to more recent posts. This is a good 50% crop from the original seeking out the best arrangement of leaves and reflection from the original view. The reflections are early morning light on the cliffs near Glacier Point reflecting in the trickling Merced River. Kyle and I were amazed how low the river was (not surprising in November before the first rain and snow for the season. But this allowed us to cross the river and move around more than we ever had in years past. I was able to find a number of pools where the Big Leaf Maple had dropped its leaves.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Always worried about over processing. Any feedback on that is appreciated.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
All comments welcome
Any pertinent technical details:
Nikon D800E Nikon 28-300mm @190mm f/11. 4-image focus stack. Of course after the crop, probably equivalent to only 2 stacked images.
Thanks for any comments, critiques and suggestions!
Edit 12/7: Wow, thank you so much for the comments. I didn’t expect such a “warm” response. Great feedback and suggestions too. I tweaked a bit further, posted and then deleted - Need to redo again. grrr. stay tuned:
Edit again: ok, went back and re-worked this again. I really appreciate each suggestion and tried to incorporate them in this repost:
@Youssef_Ismail and @Ed_McGuirk , great call on boosting the contrast on the central leaves. I’m more of a Levels guy, so I did a TK MT2 layer with Soft light blend mode and painted in the changes on the main leaves. I almost always paint with soft brushes on a mask rather than doing selections. Oh, Ed, I also burned down the corners a bit. Also punched up the blue a little. I was wondering if anyone was going to comment.
@Harley_Goldman, I boosted the reds a bit. But that got me looking at reds and I had to reduce the change on the two leaves on the right as the reds are stronger there. I also ended up dropping the magenta globally.
@Igor_Doncov , I must say that is a great crop! Many images within an image. Thanks!
I love floating leaf images. There are two things in particular that I really find fascinating. First is the way the leaves touch the water and bend the surface due to the surface tension and thus bend the light. Second, the light reflecting off the water makes it look like molten metal. I wonder if you brought some more contrast in the leaves themselves that you might not get some more detail in them.
Lon, this is simply gorgeous, the water looks like liquid light. As Youssef pointed out the surface tension creates a lot of interest, but what is really neat about it is is how the surface tension is composed of both blue and gold elements. That little touch of blue adds so much to this image, and really sets the leaves off.
The leaf arrangement is about as good as you can get in these types of images, you chose your extraction well.
In terms of suggestions, I agree with Youssef that you have room to increase contrast in the five primary leaves. I also think all the corners, except for the ULC, could have a little more vignetting added. This image is great as presented, but I think these subtle changes would ratchet it up even another notch. I took a stab at this myself. For contrast, I took a TK Midtones 1 Mask applied to a curves layer set to soft light blend mode, put it in a group and then painted it on to only the 5 leaves.
This would make a spectacular metal print, you should be very proud of this one !!
Beautiful Lon!! My $0.02, I would use a hue/sat layer and bump the reds 17 to 20 points. Just pops it a bit more but seems to keep the fine mood. Either way, really nice image.
This is a flat out gorgeous intimate landscape, Lon. Every leaf is perfectly placed and I love the leaf tension on the water. I also think Ed’s small tweaks took this scene up another notch. I really love the color palette; particularly the warm gold of the water. I have just been sitting here for a few minutes savoring this image so I hope you make a large print of this and hang it.
This is stunning, Lon. Well seen details. The subtle color palette is gorgeous. While the colors could be bumped up, I like the restrained processing. I prefer the increased contrast in Ed’s rework.
Lon, I somehow overlooked this one when you posted it, and I really like it. The repost with the more intense gold on the water is a winner for me. Just lovely colors, complex yet simple, a wonderful fall image.
That has to be one of the best images I’ve seen for looking like liquid gold; that’s special. I love the changes you made, and can’t really think of anything to add. (BTW, how do you get the image to show the before and after when clicked on?)
Thank you so much @John_Williams! I appreciate the comments very much.
As far as the “before and after”, all one needs to do is EDIT your original post and upload the second, re-worked or alternate image. By putting another image in the original post, you get to take advantage of scrolling/paging between those images. I see some folks post their updated images in a “reply,” but then you can’t go between images for comparison.
