Photographing aspen trees is a challenge but I love using the bracken to layer amongst the trunks when they have some curve and interest! This is my latest attempt with a focus stack to give the image depth.
Let me know what you see and like/dislike about the composition or processing. I am always trying to improve and appreciate any feedback.
A great small scene. I think you have managed the brightness of the tree trunks and the colors of the ground vegetation in a good way. The only input is that I for this type of images would prefer all of the tree trunks to be separated and not overlapping. But sometimes that is not possible to achieve!
Nice work. I like the ferns’ softness against the relatively bolder tree trunks. I’m seeing some odd, smeary sort of thing going on with parts of the two center trunks - like a marshmallow effect. The rest of the trunks seem crisp to me, so that stuck out. Seems like you tried some blurring as well, something strange in the background near and between the trunks on the right. 
Otherwise this is a nice arrangement with decent separation in the trees. Something hard to do a lot of the time. You could try playing with some luminosity or color masks to get some separation and contour in the ferns themselves. That might be interesting.
It is from doing a focus stack and photoshop not getting everything quite right. A bit of focus breathing on my lens probably hurts it
Oh yeah, that’s probably it. I find for more than a few images, Photoshop isn’t the best stacker. Zerene or Helicon will do a better job and allow you to do more extensive and detailed retouching.
Hey Kyle, I think you’ve done a really good job with the tones and the editing of this photo. I really enjoy that. When it comes to composition for me, especially with forest, seems like this one of the biggest things you can do is separate all of the tree trunks from one another so the tree on the right side that’s the biggest tree is intersecting with some of the trunks in the back, which takes away from the composition a little bit. So if you just step just 1 foot to the left, that might create some separation between those tree trunks and give you a stronger composition.
I have to agree. The separation isn’t perfect here and I’m not sure it would have been entirely possible as I spent 5 minutes moving myself and the tripod around making different compositions. I probably shot 10 different variations and I liked these compromises most. Some forest scenes work better than others! I hope to keep searching next season for more things that work better than this and that’s part of the fun in it after all!
Lovely mix of the trunks with the ferns Kyle. Great thoughts on composition above, but this is really enjoyable regardless.
Kyle,
Excellent autumn image of the aspen trunks. I agree the bracken is working beautifully with the trunks. I really like how you’ve isolated this little scene to emphasize that. The image is a bit bright, but I think very fitting.
The only nit I have is that I think the sides feel quite tight and I’m wishing for some breathing room. I expect given the subject that there were other trunks that would have been distracting on the edges and so this was probably the best frame/crop you could compromise with .
Lon
