Fall in Sequoia National Park

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Took this Sunday 10/11/20 in Sequoia National Park while exploring a new trail for me. I really liked the diagonal lines and flow to this composition. My editing skills are lacking a good way to tone down the light yellows in the lower third of the frame.

What technical feedback would you like if any? All is welcome especially editing. Should I have focus stacked? Advantages of stacking vs. drawbacks?

What artistic feedback would you like if any? All is welcome

Pertinent technical details or techniques: Olympus E-PL7 M Zukio 12-40 / 40mm / f22 / ISO 640 / 0.4 sec

(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn). Single shot

If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ‘ig’ and leave your Instagram username below. @kenHebert5
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Hi Ken. Can you tell me, what editing software do you have available?

Very nice image. I like the light yellows as presented, but think the upper left corner tree could be a bit lighter and the bit of sky to its left could be removed, perhaps by cropping.

Lovely mix of vegetation Ken, and those subtle light beams add a nice texture.

@Dick_Knudson has the right question. If you want to adjust those yellows, options would depend on what you are editing (raw?) and what you are editing with.

Lightroom and photoshop.

Ken this scene has a lot of interesting elements … the colorful dogwood leaves, the trees and the light streaks are the elements that strike me.
You were struck by the diagonals and I had to work a little to see that and then I saw diagonal line of dogwood, diagonal recession of trees, and diagonal sun streaks.
First steps were in lightroom.
Toning down the lower yellows was a key to allowing me to see the diagonals. Well, actually, I cropped the bottom of the dogwoods out, leaving the diagonal of their top edge.
Then the trees seemed to be leaning left … a bit more diagonal than you wanted. So I used the Rotate option in the crop tool for that. I also felt that the big mossy pine on the right edge distracted from the kinetics of the diagonals, so cropped that out also.
Also moved the Blacks slider to its left (-38), to introduce greater contrast. That made a couple of areas too dark, so used a brush to reverse that.
Used the brush to darken at least one side of the trees in the sunstreaks area.
To make the remaining dogwood leaves less yellow, I chose to use a brush with temperature shifted toward blue, and highlights pulled quite low,
The Lightroom result was

to work on the sun streaks, I went to Photoshop. Used the Polygon lasso to surround that area, and applied a Curves layer with the Increase Contrast setting to accentuate the light streaks against the darker background, then I increased the brightness of the top end of the curves. Tried to address the excess brightness to the right edge of the left upper tree trunk, finally zoomed in, used polygon lasso to select the bright area, and then cloned in greenery from its right. The selection boundary prevented me from cloning over the tree trunk.
Result of all that is below. I hope I was faithful to your objective of showing off the diagonals, without overloading it with my preferences.

WOW, I really like what you did! The crop is really well thought out and the tree darkening adds so much. Thank you for the feedback and great example. It is funny how my Ego at first gets in my way of growth. My first thought was don’t crop it, but it really clears up chaos by doing it. THANK YOU!