The little yellow flowers in this scene are an invasive species and have completely taken over the forrest floor around much of the park I went to, there are some areas where the Bluebells still reign supreme though! I was drawn to the angular shape of the fallen tree and how the Bluebells seemed to surround it.
I have one more from this trip I will probably share.
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I always seem to struggle with the clutter on the forest floor around here. I tried to reduce the impact by cloning some out and desaturating the reds in the leaves starting to pop in at the bottom of the scene. I’m interested in if the chaos is of the floor is too much for people or if it is just “nature” and it is what it is kind of thing. I go back and forth personally, but I see so many images, particularly in Instagram, where things seem so “clean.” Open to other suggestions about the image as well. Always looking to get better.
My brother and I spent a couple days last week shooting bluebells and had the same conditions of a lot of clutter. He came away with a few successful images but I didn’t. I think you found a great section here and a nice composition. To my eye there is not too much clutter.
I like the colors you have managed and th white balance you have chosen to use. I don’t find the tree stump that compelling of a subject. I probably would have concentrated on a closer composition of the blue flowers on the green background.
Your processing of color and WB looks great to me. Blues and spring greens are not always easy to handle well in processing, but they look great here.
You got very close, which goes a long way towards avoiding clutter. The most significant clutter here are the cutoff branches at the top center, some viewers may perceive them as pulling your eye out of the frame. If you agree, they would be easy to clone away.
As presented, I would prefer to this image flipped horizontal. This would create more of a left to right flow where the strongest cluster of bluebells would be on the right, and the fallen trunk would lead to it, left to right.
This is too severe a crop for image quality purposes, but I could see a tighter composition that places even more emphasis on the big cluster of bluebells. To me the bluebells hold more interest than the fallen stump, so I would prefer to see them emphasized more. This also reflects a horizontal flip.
I here you on the forest floor clutter, David. It is quite the challenge finding a clean composition sometimes. The colors look spot on to me and I like the direction you were going with this. I think @Ed_McGuirk’s tighter crop is the way to go as it emphasizes a beautiful section of bluebells while still retaining the essence of the fallen tree which caught your eye originally. I still have a couple of bluebell images to post so I am looking forward to seeing your other ones.
@Ed_McGuirk This is an improvement for me!!! Thank you for saying that. I know @Igor_Doncov brought it up as well. I’m excited that the colors are starting to look more realistic/natural. Green in particular has been a real struggle for me.
It is interesting, I hadn’t considered flipping it. It is amazing how we “read” images and now that fallen log brings you into the frame vs. out of it. I did get close, but I see what you are going for here now (by the way, I just bought that 100-400 yesterday!).
@Ed_Lowe I agree, his is better…continuing to learn here! I have one more that I may post, I didn’t come away with anything I really loved.
