This is an image from last year, taken on a misty morning. The mist in the background helped me isolate the beautiful form of the tree. Edited from a black and white JPEG, and I had to lift shadows considerably to enhance separation from its surroundings. I rather like the moodiness of the end result.
Any feedback is welcome
Fujifilm x-t4
XF 16-80MM
Nikos, this is indeed a moody image. I like it a lot. The leaning tree makes me feel like it’s struggling to stay alive. Well seen. I also like the B&W treatment. The larger version shows some noise which I think adds to the feeling of an old B&W film image. I might try to clone out the pole and wire in the lower/mid right but that’s minor.
Well done.
I agree that it is a good subject, well composed and very suitable for monochrome treatment but I do think that you were handicapped by working from a jpg. It works a bit muddy to me and the tonal range and differentiation are a bit undifferentiated. I realize that fog is grey in grey, but on such a nice subject it should be a subtle veil.
I am intrigued by this image. It reminded me of the first photographs by the inventor of the negative/positive process, William Henry Fox Talbot. The first book published with photographs was “The Pencil of Nature” in 1844.
Give it a look and let me know your thoughts.
Steve
Trees like this always tug at my emotions. I do tend to anthropomorphize them just a little. Weariness is what I get from this and so the muddy tonalities work to emphasize that, but I would try lifting the lights just a bit - you could do that with a curves adjustment or individual sliders, but it would be worth playing with I think. The pole could easily be cloned out if you have a mind. I wonder at how much more room there might be on all sides of the tree. It seems a bit cramped, but could be for a reason and the result is a bit like a casual portrait.
This tree portrait simply commanded me to relax and enjoy the cool, foggy scene and the labor of the larger (older?) tree to survive.
The fog provides a fine differentiation between the subject and its environment.
The other foreground tree is a strong player in the scene due to its placement and strong darkness. In the attachment, I first flipped the image, to convey energy flowing to the right (I am a left to right reader), and the result is that the subject tree seems to be in some sort of conversation with the other. Still, the other seemed too strong, so I lightened its gray to give the subject tree a bit more prominence.
I dealt with the noisy sky by selecting Sky, then contracted the selection a bit before applying a 2-3 pixel Gaussian blur.
Topaz Sharpen Ai brought out a little detail in the needles of the subject tree.
Thanks for taking us to this scene.
Hi @David_Bostock … yeah the noise comes from raising the shadows considerable using a jpeg, but I also don’t mind it that much. The pole, I quite like and left it in the image on intention. It’s so small and not so visible immediately that I find it adds some extra depth when looking at this image
So thank you to everyone for giving me this valuable feedback. I initially wanted to reply on each comment and started with David, but I think it’s better to summarize things here…
Let me start by acking that the image looks muddy per your comments, and suffers from noise as I pushed the shadows considerably, so @jaapv you are right. Plus let me note that the shutter speed was quite low at 1/20s, so some of the leaves were also blurry due to movement. All in all, from a technical / execution perspective, this image has obvious weaknesses. I posted it for critique nevertheless, as I find it interesting from an expressive point of view. It has an impressionistic aspect to it. I know that the majority of images here are excellent in regards to tecnical execution, so I was not really sure and certainly curious of the kind of feedback I’d get on this one.
Thank you for sharing your impressions @Steve_Rosendahl, and for the reference to Talbot, and his project which I was not aware of and I found quite interesting.
@Kris_Smith I also do regard trees in the same way you do, aaaall the time 
@Dick_Knudson , thank you so much for your effort in tweaking this image. I still prefer the original / non-flipped version, but I also like the lift of shadows in the adjacent tree a lot, as it allows us to focus more on the main subject.
Regarding the suggestions to remove the pole on the bottom right, I left it there on purpose, as I think it adds to the composition. It’s small size prevents it from being a distraction, and rather adds an extra element and some depth when reading this image, from my point of view.
So, thank you all guys, I am now glad I posted this for critique. I wanted to try to repeat the same image being better prepared, but unfortunately the tree was cut down as it was sick, so some of you saw that right, the tree was trying to stay alive … but eventually perished .
