Captured this after a light rain in Cades Cove in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We were very fortunate to catch the leaves at their peak. This is cropped a great deal; I shot it as a horizontal with a another tree to the right of this one but that tree wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be, hence the large crop. I shot this from a pretty good distance because deer were eating close to this and I didn’t want to disrupt them by getting closer.
Beautiful work, Bill! The comp works well with the way that the branches fill out the frame and keep my eye moving. The fall color is of course beautiful as well. The timing this year was a bit unusual based on my limited experience and from what I understand from other photographers who have been shooting here longer than I have. It looks like it worked to your advantage though. Nicely done!
Thanks Brian! Yes, the leaves turned late this year. We were locked in on the time we visited because the trip was our honeymoon. We figured we would miss most all of the color, but the color delay worked perfectly for us.
Bill, I think your crop did a great job with the composition, it makes this wonderfully shaped tree so dominant in the image. I like your choice to have the branches go right into the frame edges, it reinforces the dominance of this tree. The colors and saturation look good to me. The highlights in the tree branches look a little hot on my monitor, I would suggest burning them down a little. But that is a nit, overall I love the graphic shape of this tree outlined against the fall color.
Beautiful, Bill. Great looking tree and color behind. I would back off the green saturation/burn in the grass. To my eye, it competes too much with the tree and fall color. Not a big deal though. This is quite nice.
Your crop works very nicely, Bill. I love the character of the tree with all the radiating branches and the autumn color in the BG makes for the perfect canvas for the sycamore. I only have two minor suggestions: reduce the greens just a little and tone down some of the whites in the tree. Great eye to spot this and well worth a few minor tweaks.
I like the subject but might consider a strong vignette to better emphasize the central trunk/branches. This would also tend to make the colors even richer at the edges.
Love this Bill! What great pair of trees! such a great setup with the striking, barren trees against the background of pure color. I even like the contrast with the green grass and row of pale vegetation at the bottom; although I think an alternate would be without the grasses and just a square crop of the trees and color. But I’ll take this as presented. Beautiful!
I love the naked tree and the patterns in the leaves. I do think the saturation could be reduced, especially in foreground grass. But is minor. I think this works nicely.
-P
