When in the UP just before a sunrise shoot, we stopped at a lookout to see if it was going to work out. It wasn’t, but on the way back I thought of Ed and Mario and their fern quest and decided to give it a go. I have had a lot of time to shoot ferns over the years, but bracken has never figured large. After poking around for a bit I decided on this composition because of the tree with the broken section. It was a challenge finding the right way to place the trees in the back - to give them enough separation and presence, but not too much.
Specific Feedback Requested
Impressions, feedback & improvements are welcome.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Lumix G9
Lumix G Vario 12-35mm f/2.8 lens @ 24mm (48mm equiv.)
f/10 | 2.5 seconds | ISO 200
Tripod up high, polarizer
Yeah…it wasn’t windy. Lr processed for a little crop to eliminate a messy tree, tonality and white balance adjustment. A little lens correction, sharpening & nr. A soft curve adjustment to bring up the mids slightly. Green channel got a luminance lift. Ps to remove a couple of stray branches poking into the frame.
Kris…you have joined the expedition ! Really like this image. THe FG tree to the 3 BG trees is a line my eye follows and I think that is perfect for the image. Grea tcomp. The format of islands /small patches of ferns are really adding . I think it is most difficult to get a larger scene of ferns that actually works, you and Ed have shown it can be done though.
I have! There’s a whole gallery on my SmugMug site devoted to ferns, but you’re right, the big view is a tough one. Once I was in a hillside of Christmas fern in NH and that was pretty cool. And some other kind (hay-scented I think) in Mass, but that’s the only time I think the big landscape actually worked with them. Glad you think this works. I stood there wiggling around with the camera on the tall tripod and well…I hoped it would come together.
Finding big scenes of ferns that work well is definitely harder than finding the detail shots. But you have struck green gold here. I think you convey the depth of this scene well, both from the arrangement of the trees, and the implied diagonal line of the ferns going from the LLC to the URC.
And the processing looks great, those greens are luscious.
Whats ironic is that like you, I was finding all these fern shots while out looking for something else, in my case mountain laurel. It was not a great year for mountain laurel, but I’m happy with my ferns.
Thanks @Ed_McGuirk - I had my doubts about this one, but kept coming back to it. It was a pretty careful composition which I’m glad I had time to explore while waiting for a couple of the slower members of the workshop.
I quite miss laurel. Northern Wisconsin has almost none of any variety. It’s weird and one of the first differences I noticed in the forest landscape. Bogs, too, have fewer species. I think I’ve noticed a bit of rhodora here and there, but hardly any. Blueberries are the same. Barely any up here, but tons of blackberries and raspberries.
After taking time with the scene, I found that my gaze is regularly drawn on a line beginning at the broad swath left of the tortured stump in the foreground. It goes back to the right of the line of trees in the middle ground and fades into the opening to the right of the last tree in the line.
The final resting point is comfortable. It makes the viewer want to wander back there to see what can be found.
It might be interesting to do something, either lighten or darken, to add a welcoming entrance or darkening to add ominous mystery to that small area. I’m not sure which would work better.
I very much like the right foreground tree with all the lichens.
I find these kind of scenes difficult to compose due to their chaotic nature and the difficulty in getting the spacing in the trees just right. I think you have a very nice composition here. It was a good idea to move in close to the foreground trunk as that together with the ferns add a sense of depth to the scene.
A beautiful scene Kristen. I too applaud the composition, it really works well. I’ve got to remember to pay attention to things like spacing, and move around, so thanks for a good demonstration of this.
Did you focus on the big tree in the foreground? Was focus an issue at all?
Thanks @Brian_Schrayer & @Mark_Muller - it certainly pays to try different things and sometimes zooming with your feet is the best way to find what works. The tree thing really came home to me when I was paddling cypress lakes in LA & TX last year. I’d always been aware of it, but it became critical with those trees. I was glad I had my very tall tripod with me - I needed the height!
In terms of focus I did concentrate on the one in the fg and since I use focus peaking I knew what I had before I hit the shutter. It isn’t quite the same as the markings on my 35mm lenses, but it makes using hyperfocal distance to get the correct DOF pretty easy for a digital camera.
