Golden forest carpet

[nedyalko (Nedyalko Prisadnikov)]

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Another image from early September in Northern Lapland. The forest floor was one of my favourite aspects of photographing the boreal forests. I have been struggling with this image for about of week now. This is horizontally flipped version. The first time I am doing this and still can’t convince myself if this is necessary of not. Another thing that has been problematic for me with this edit is the levels of contrast and saturation.

Specific Feedback

As I mentioned this image is flipped horizontally, and I am still not sure whether I wanted this. The main reason for flipping is the dark patch on the bottom left (used to be bottom right in the original image). I felt that the position on the bottom right was too dominant for me and my eyes tended to gravitate towards it. The other aspect is the diagonal lines. Not sure I want them from the bottom left to the top right, or the other way around.

Another thing, I struggled with was overal contrast and color processing. The dynamic range is a bit extreme here with direct sunlight on parts of the forest floor. I wanted to have good details on the brightest highlights, without letting the shadoow be too dark. The feeling when seeing this in real life was quite soft. The autumn sun felt quite gentle. It took quite a bit of back and forth with editting to try to preserve this. Although my camera has amazing dynamic range, it’s not a given that you get the nice result without effort.

Technical Details

Taken with a full-frame digital camera. Focal length 48mm, f/11, ISO 64, 1/50 sec exposure.

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• Vision and Purpose:
• Conceptual:
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• Composition:
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[Kris_Smith (Kristen M Smith)]

I can see why you were drawn to this scene. It’s so inviting and dynamic with the different textures and shapes. The diagonals are killer. Direct sun is so great for bringing out those elements, but I also sometimes struggle with setting the levels in the shadows. These look ok for a more artistic interpretation of the scene rather than a documentary one. For me the most interesting part of the scene is smack in the middle so maybe a crop to 16:9 or similar would make this a bit more compelling. The colors look fine to me overall, but sometimes playing with Point Color or the Color Mixer helps, especially the Luminance slider. Maybe picking out the reds would be another way to enhance this.

You uploaded a very small jpg so I can’t tell if this is really as soft as it looks. Flipping it works ok for me. Terrific location.

[Ed_Lowe]

Nedyalko,
The light is simply gorgeous and has created some wonderful diagonals in this woodland scene. I wish you had posted a larger version so I could really enjoy all those details on the forest floor. BTW, the processing looks just fine to me. Very nicely done!

[Mark_Seaver]

Nedyalko, add me to those who think this looks fine as presented. The colors in the forest floor are gorgeous and don’t look oversaturated. The shadows do a fine job of pulling my eyes from lower left to upper right, which adds lots of feeling of depth. The backlit glow of that small tree, looks good. Without seeing the flipped version, I can’t comment on a preference, other than to say that this works very well.

[nedyalko (Nedyalko Prisadnikov)]

Thank you all for the feedback. Not sure what happened during the upload, I tried uploading an image that was 3000x2400 pixels.

Here is also an earlier edit without the flip.