What technical feedback would you like if any?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
A few weeks ago I pretended to be still young and hiked for a week with my daughter and my old backpack the so-called GR400 in the Cantal region in France. The itinerary is above 3000ft and we encountered a few snowfields to cross and even some snow in the woods. Like here, on a foggy day.
I like the atmosphere in the misty forest (but hated the lack of a view when we reached a 6000 ft summit). To save weight, I didn’t carry a reflex camera, and the image was made of 3 bracketed exposures with an Olympus Stylus 1 compact, exp. time around 1/40sec.
The image has technical flaws that could have been avoided with a DSLR, but I am curious if it has any impact on somebody who is not biased, like me, by the experience of being there at that moment. So please, shoot at it.
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
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Han. you demonstrate here the power of pocket cameras A good image and to me a fine atmosphere . I should leave it as it is.
Han,
This has great impact. The mood and atmosphere is oozing here. I tell ya one thing, I would want to be hiking in here after dark… 
The muted earth tones are quite fitting and you did well to combine the images for exposure.
The only small thing I’m torn about is the ULC. I either want the brightness cropped out (or dealt with in processing somehow) Or preferrably a little extra room on the left so the main tree here has a little more space. Rock and a hard place as they say… either more room, or none at all. Not sure if cropping from the left would help or hurt. Not a huge deal, just me being picky.
Good eye to recognize the potential. thanks for sharing.
Lon
Thank you for your reactions, @Ben_van_der_Sande and @Lon_Overacker.
Glad you like it.
Lon, I understand what you mean. A little more room to the left would improve the image. It is not available in the files, unfortunately. I don’t like the result of a crop.
I tried blunt force and used Photoshop’s Content aware Fill with a little cloning. The result confirms your opinion that a little more room for the main tree would be nice. It might be acceptable in the 1500px wide image here, but there are considerable flaws in the image at the original size. To do this correctly would take a bit more time…
Han,
Agree, I don’t think a crop is the way to go - and you’re right cloning would be tricky too.
There’s another way that might do the trick. I took a try at it. Did a couple of things. first, I think simply burning down that bright strip on the left makes a big difference. I actually picked a dark gray color and a soft brush. then painted on a lowered opacity copy of the bg layer (about 35% opacity) Might as well call it just burning down. Tried to make the luminosity a little closer to the right side of the tree; in fact, I did some painting/burning just to the right of the tree as well.
Then, rather than cloning, I extended the canvas by about 50px. Then with the Marquee tool, made a long narrow selection of the left edge. then using the Free Transform and scale, I “stretched” the left edge ever so slightly provide just a hint more room. In some cases, it’s better than cloning and a heck of a lot easier. The trick is not to stretch too far so it’s not obvious.
Minor change, but I think effective.
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Lon, this is a nice way to do it and a lot better than my Content aware Fill with cloning.
Thanks for taking time to show it, I like it a lot.
