The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Back in 2016, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation created a statewide monthly contest to celebrate the agency’s twenty-fifth anniversary. The contest was named Focus on the Wild. Each month a theme was given. January was Texas icons, February was Texas rivers, and so on. I entered the Frio River Cypress (a photo made in 2007) for the February contest. To my surprise, the editorial photographers for the foundation and magazine selected the photo as the best of 2016 February. Later in the year, the same photo was also selected as the winner for the year. I give this photo credit for having changed the way I look at personal photography.
The photo was made with a point-and-shoot camera. From its JPG format, I created a RAW file and did some basic edits in LR, with emphasis on highlights and shadows and less saturation.
Specific Feedback
I confess I have not changed the photo since that contest because I wanted to preserve it in its original setting as submitted. Please keep in mind not much could have been changed from a JPG file. However, if you have further suggestions on color, saturation, distracting elements, etc., please let me know.
A wonderful capture, with excellent processing for what you had to work with! Congratulations on the publications, and how wonderful that it gave a boost to your photography.
The image is beautifully composed and I would not have guessed at its humble origins. My only suggestion is that I wonder if today’s selection tools would let you bring out more contrast on the gold BG trees, but maybe you have pushed that as far as possible.
Yes, much better, but I think you could go even further. The highlights in the original were very gray. I’m guessing the area may have been blown out in the capture, and reducing contrast gave gray. One option is to use a Curve to add color in different channels instead of all of them, which gives gray. Go back to the original, which is too bright, and make a curve adjustment layer (using the mask for that area) and pull down the UR corner in each channel to add color. Try the three channels to see what each one does. Two will usually balance to add some desired color instead of just a gray.
Diane, thank you again for your valuable comments and guidance. I’m not very versatile on PS, but I will work on your suggestions this week and see what I can do and achieve. I’ll write again when I post a new edit. Thanks again.
Sympathies. I’m trying to master removing stars in deep sky images in order to process (tonally stretch) the faint details without blowing the stars out, then process the stars separately and put them back. Best of luck to both of us! We’ll both find out it’s easy if you know how…
EgĂdio, this is a lovely view. I like your emphasis on the tree bases and their trunks. Those are beautifully set off by the colors in the water and the bushes in the distance. Your enhancement of the bushes adds well to the distant colors.
Mark, thank you for taking the time to write your critique. I very much appreciated that. As for what you said, that is precisely the reason I’ll have to proceed carefully with any adjustments to the trees in the BG. I do not want to make them too prominent and compete with the cypresses. Thanks again.
This is a really interesting picture you can spend time with. The trees look like elephant feet that are stomping around in the water and the nice green and yellow around them give it all a complete picture. I like the contrast you added as it brings more light into the picture and lead you more into the picture. Wonderful.
Well, ,Diane, I hope you have been successful in your edits. I realized I am not as ignorant about PS as I tend to think I am.
Your instructions above were as clear as our fall days lately. In fact, I tend to use the Curves panel often to adjust colors. Generally, I use it for the entire image and per channel, but this time I did for the masked BG trees. From the start, I did not want to have those trees overpowering the trees in the FG. So, I went ahead with your directions and applied the changes conservatively. I adjusted each channel little by little so as not to blow things into a “nuclear” color and/or contrast. Anyway, it’s hard to gauge what your eyes were looking for and what I did. I’ve added the second re-edit above.
Thanks again for your valuable and persistent feedback to try to improve this image. Thanks to everyone for their feedback, too.
It’s gone darker from pulling down the corners, because it lowered the midpoint of the curve a little. Try pulling the midpoints on this channels back up a tweak.
But is there a way to go to a version before the trees went so gray? That’s what I was thinking. This is a way to darken an overly bright area and hold a little color instead of darkening all the channels equally, which makes the lighter tones gray. I was assuming the area was initially too bright and got darkened in a way that made it gray.
Diane, I have upped the midpoint a little. It may be too bright now. We might be losing track of the fact this was a 3 MP camera shooting in JPG. I converted the file to RAW and upscaled it. Artifacts may have been introduced and/or other data created or lost in those processes. This version is lighter, but it may be too light.
I think it’s looking much more realistic. The gray was so obvious in the earlier versions. You could hold down the 1/4 point of the curve a tiny bit and see how that looks. That will move the midpoint so adjustment there will be needed. You have a handicap in the original JPEG but curves is very powerful for contrast control.
Diane, I cannot find words to express my thanks for your tenacity in trying to make this the best it possibly could. Yes, there is a handicap in the original: not too many pixels to work with. There’s just so much that technology can help with old files. Nevertheless, thanks to your guidance, this image does look better than it originally was. I have learned a lot (including not trying to use old images here). I will also get a new print from this final edit to replace the old one I have. Thanks again.
