French Creek, PA.
Seeking any and all advice and comments. Thanks in advance.
Please view the large image!
Is this a composite: No
Canon T3i, 1/1000 s, f/11, ISO 400, EF 24-105mm f/4 @ 32 mm, CPL.
Raw file processed in LRClassicCC and Topaz Denoise AI. TK resize/sharpening for web.
This is just the kind of thing that would make me stop and look, too. It’s like those leaves exploded from the branch. I’m not sure a darker vignette works here, maybe try a white one and see how it looks. I might also brighten the snow a little bit and have a go at cloning some of the larger bits of debris, although it might break up the pattern of it as it fell naturally. Great little scene! Thanks for sharing.
An interesting concept for an image, I love your title. The composition feels a bit left heavy to me, and the lower right corner (LRC) feels somewhat empty. I’m not sure if the negative space in the LRC adds to the image or not. And my brain keeps wanting to see a fourth leaf in that LRC for some reason. Normally having three of something works well, but for some reason I’m not sure if it does here. I’m not sure if any of this makes sense, but in the end, the composition doesn’t feel well balanced to me.
I played with an alternate crop, I think it helps a little, but that may be a matter of personal taste.
Thank you @Kris_Smith and @Ed_McGuirk for your comments. Ed, yes, being too close to symmetric but not quite may not work; making it clearly asymmetric may be better.
Great snow pattern formed by the branch. This is personal preference, but I prefer it with the snow a little cleaner:
Thank you, @John_Williams! What did you do there, a lot of clone stamp?
@Ronald_Murphy , I used the Dust & Scratches Filter in Photoshop.
That filter can be frustrating; it can remove a lot of detail. However on an image like this where what you want to remove is dark and what you want to keep is light, you can set the layer mode to Lighten; that tells Photoshop to only keep changes that affect things darker then 50% gray. I also slightly sharpened the filtered result to better match the original sharpness, and I did some quick painting on the layer mask so the filter didn’t affect the leaves and branches. It sounds a little time consuming, but actually only takes a minute or two.
Thank you! I’ll give that a try.
