Thank you Alex for providing the image critiques. This is a winter image I photographed in 2021 in a local state park here in Denver. I never thought of trees having a skeletal framework aka bones but it’s true. The bones are revealed in winter and especially come to form after a snow storm. In other seasons trees dress themselves in leaves and tease us in the fall.
Specific Feedback Requested
Do the cool tones work with the scene?
Are the skinny branches on the bottom distracting?
Does the crop work?
Technical Details
Single exposure, FE 100-400 GM lens, 297mm, 1/640 sec, f11, ISO 400
Bones indeed. I thought Ghost Trees. This is really intriguing Alfredo. Well seen, captured, and processed. To me the cool tones work, as does the crop. Well done.
Wow, this is gorgeous! The lines of the trees are so strong, but softened by the snow. The only small nit I would mention is the tiny reddish trunk in the LLC. It catches my eye as a deviation from the pattern, I think because of the color and its closeness to the trunk to its right. It’s a small thing, though. This is spectacular.
Bonnie, I never noticed that bright part of the trunk on the lower left. Thank you for mentioning it. I will burn and reduce saturation of that area. Appreciate your feedback!
I echo what has been said already. To me this image is about patterns and lines and the arrangement sits right with me so the crop seems spot on. Well done.
I keep on coming back to your image and just looking at it. I just really don’t know what to say except that I absolutely love it! Your choice of black and white is perfect. It makes me think of a charcoal pencil drawing. Bare trees are some of my favorite subjects for drawing. Perfect capture!
Beautiful low contrast image. I like it a lot it has equal interest throughout the image . I suppose you could argue it lacks a centre of interest so nothing holds your eye. That is not what I think though, I prefer a cup half full approach, namely, everything holds my interest, I like every square centimeter.
Really beautiful image Alfredo, and I think the crop works well. I have three nits:
One is that the image feels a little dim, probably as a result of the slight blue color and the darker midtones combining to make a sort of dullish gray, for a subject we know to be white. Looks like your highlights already just come up to the right side of the histogram, so I would consider just brightening up the midtones here to avoid blowing anything out while still brightening up those grays.
Two is that there’s kind of big circle of brightness above, just to the right of the center, which I would darken. I actually just did the above-mentioned brightening of midtones and then masked out that brighter area and it evened things out.
Three is that big empty space between the two halves of the image. I wouldn’t mind it so much except that the rest of the trunks have much tighter spacing throughout the frame, including up to the edges of the frame. So that space in the middle becomes more pronounced relative to the rest. I would try simply squishing down that middle section, including the right half of the biggest “V” tree and up to the edge of the branches of the prominent tree on the right. It feels slightly more balanced to me with that change.
Thank you Alex for the excellent suggestions! I really appreciate it. Bumping up the midtones and preserving the luminosity of the highlights was a great idea. I’ll incorporate all these recommended changes into the final image.
I’m in line with the above Alfredo; this one is has such wonderful lines and mood.
I think the cool tones are perfect to emphasize the coldness. My preference would be the same image without the skinny branches, but that’s a nit and absolutely not a reason to try to “fix” them. (Sometimes I think we pursue perfection in photography too much. Sometimes the small “imperfections” help keep it real.) The crop looks great to me.
