This is another image from my recent trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park / Blue Ridge Parkway.
What technical feedback would you like if any? Any and all comments are welcome, but from a technical perspective your thoughts on the processing would be helpful. The bright highlights in the upper left do tend to pull my eye a bit, but I have already cropped this to a 4X5 format so I am a little hesitant to further crop it. Are the highlights a significant distraction?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
I often struggle with these kind of compositions due to the inherent busyness of the scene. I felt like the foreground plants together with the flame azalea anchor this scene well though. I also liked the way that the positioning of the azaleas seems to mimic the shape of the tree branches. The upper third of the image does tend to get a little busy, but that’s difficult to avoid with these types of scenes. I’m curious to know your thoughts on the composition.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Single RAW capture
24mm
f/8 @ 1/4 sec
ISO 64
Processing info:
Basic RAW processing to adjust exposure (highlights and shadows mainly) in Lightroom
Photoshop:
Levels adjustment for global contrast
Luminosity masks to increase mid-tone contrast and to lighten the shadows.
TK’s dehaze action from V7 panel
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You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
@Brian_Schrayer Hi Brian. I hear you about struggling with compositions in busy scenes, especially when they’re all one color such as a forest scene. It really makes you pay attention to different patterns and textures. Also anomalies such as the azaleas in this excellent photo. My eyes immediately were drawn to the flowers and that brought my attention to the different leaves and the localized areas of patterns that they create. Without the flowers my eyes would have wandered wanting to find an anchor somewhere besides the trees. The tree trunks make great leading lines at the top of the frame, but the flowers make you look closer at the whole scene.
The base of leaves at the bottom grounds the comp and the tree trunks, as mentioned before, helps lead your eyes to the top of the frame. The colors sure are nice, perhaps the use of a polarizer? The focus is great. I think that you have a winner here. Congratulations. Excellent work.
Brian, I can only echo what @Gary_Randall said. I’m really liking the variety you captured. The mid-tone contrast in the shadows at middle right bring it into a pleasing sense of balance in terms of the exposure. Something you should be really proud to have recorded, and thanks for sharing. BTW, I wasn’t aware that azaleas were an anomaly there, as Gary mentioned.
What a lovely image. I can’t think of a way to improve this. You could crop a bit from the bottom and even less from the sides to make this primarily about the flowers and the tree. Just another option. But this just about perfect as is.
Brian,
This is beautifully done and I will also echo what @Gary_Randall has already mentioned. I would not want to crop the image any farther either as this has a nice balance as is. The only other thing you could do to minimize the bright area would be a little cloning or content aware tool to put in a few leaves as long as that was not against your principals. Either way this is lovely.
This is a sweet image, Brian. Nicely balanced composition and I love the various shapes and textures coming through in the greenery. The azalea make for a great focal point. Processing looks good to my eye. Nice job!
Looks great to my eye, a fine composition of a beautiful scene. I would be inclined to clone out the gray background sky/mountain or whatever is back there. I find it to be a minor eye magnet. Otherwise, this sure works for me.
This is quite lovely and beautiful. The power of greens! With a little color in the flowers to break things up - actually to help organize! I think this is excellent as presented and would not crop any further from the top either. I like the variation in leaves/vegetation as the leaves at the bottom anchor this intimate scene nicely.
If anything, I might crop a bit off the right to reduce the dark hollow on the right. Crop just enough to split the difference between the two dark trunks in the top right.
As far as the bright patches up top, looks like the main area is too big to do an effective CA clone. However, I think it might be worth some time to clone the smaller patches that would be less noticeable. For example the bright spot in the “v” of the upper left tree and also the “v” of the dark trunk, upper right. I suppose you could waste a lot of time getting all the small ones, but I think even just a few of them would help. You can also reduce the luminosity of the bright areas a little - it won’t cure, but can alleviate the distraction a little.
Brian, this image looks pretty darn good to me, you have done a nice job of organizing this chaos, and creating some visual interest. Obviously the orange azaleas create some color contrast against the greens. But I also like how the leaves of the trees and the leaves of the ground cover have differetn shapes, and different shades of yellows and greens. The ground cover is particularly interesting, and is a really nice secondary element. Your processing of color, contrast and exposure look right on the money to me.
The bright patch of white sky in the ULC is a minor distraction, and I think you should not crop from the top to reduce or eliminate it, because you would lose too much of the top of the tree, which is worth keeping. If you use luminosity masks, one way to tackle this would be to make a selection of Lights 3 or Lights 4, and blur that selection. Then go Edit / Fill / color using a dark green color selected from surrounding leaves. I did it crudely in a rework here, to give you an idea of what is possible.
Love the rich greens and the way they contrast with the orange flowers. I’d consider cropping off all the sky elements peeping through the trees/leaves. They draw my eye away from the flowers.
