Here’s a slightly tweaked version, based on Mark’s input (slight brightening of the upper branch area he mentioned, which was a useful detail for him to point me toward!), plus another tweak or two I noticed which I felt would help a little more with the sense of depth/atmosphere:
Here’s a shot from an afternoon dog walk a few days ago. I’ve enjoyed passing this driveway between horse pastures for years now on many of our local dog walks. But between the extra strong fall colors around here this season (extra strong for western WA, at least!) and the fact that this property is going to be carved up into 40 house lots soon, I finally took a moment to photograph it. I’m glad I did.
Tech details - I shot at 70mm, and focus stacked three exposures. I used a mix of regular dodging and “luminosity painting” (i.e. dodging through a luminosity selection) to help reinforce the natural composition here, including trying to allow the feeling of depth and light in this scene to come through.
James, this is a beautiful scene, and I’m glad that you captured this too. So sad that the scene will soon be carved up into a housing development. I know that you will miss seeing this in person, but you have an image here that you can print large and display somewhere that you can enjoy as long as you want. Great composition and color, with a nice leading line.
Jim, this is a delightfully inviting scene. The touch of changes in brightness do a fine job of pulling my eyes into the scene (just like if I was walking there…). Given your processing description, I think that the upper trunk/branch area of the 2nd tree from the left looks just a bit too dark, but I also think that someone who hadn’t been told about your processing approach wouldn’t notice. Overall your processing effort looks great. I agree that this would look good large and on a wall.
Thanks for the lovely feedback to both of you. Including of course Mark’s sharing his observation about that upper trunk/branch area. I’ve edited my original post to include both the first version as well as an updated version that includes my take on Mark’s suggested tweak plus a few other adjustments that I’d noticed after living with the image for a few more days (including brightening the darks along the far fence line on the left third of the image which I think better “sells” that area as being partway out in the distance toward the furthest point in the photo at the end of the driveway, where the darkest darks are even lighter - i.e. striving to amplify the look of atmospheric haze just a bit).
