Last Saturday at my weekend cottage we visited the nearby Hästhagen beech wood, primarily to photograph the first spring flowers since the trees had not yet burst into leaves. However, it was a little bit to windy. Anyhow, I found these trees with their first leaves sunlit.
Any comments are welcome!
Is this a composite: No
f/16, 1/200, ISO 200, 50 mm equiv., mft system
Ola, this is a really interesting, almost abstract image. It looks like you’re looking at a reflection in water or peering through the pensieve in Professor Dumbledore’s office (forgive the Harry Potter analogy). The foliage appears almost like little apparitions floating in front of the old tree. I think the slight movement in the leaves adds to this feel.
My only suggestions would be to consider cropping in from the left and bottom as well as addressing some artifacts. I think the square aspect works well but would like to see a uniform spread of the darker limbs in the crop. I hope it is okay that I downloaded and cropped for example below. Secondly, there are some significant lens flares which are distracting. Depending on how comfortable you are in photoshop, doing a frequency separation is probably the best (albeit not the easiest) way to remove these. This would preserve the detail and structure of the tree and allow you to keep the foliage intact while evening out the color artifacts.
Pretty unique image. The backlit leaves really sparkle against the dark branches. Look like fireflies. Well done.
Ola, I agree with Michael Lowe. The first thing I thought of were fire flies! Great image.
A very interesting and unique image Ola. It sort of reminds me of fireflies too, as @Michael_Lowe said. Whats also neat is the the branches of the trees look like they are all in one two dimensional plane, even though I know that is not the case. Very creative seeing here…
This is very cool! Very abstract and love the tree structure contrasting with the leaves. Really creative and well seen.
Great abstract view and balance of three colours.
@Mario_Cornacchione, @Michael_Lowe, @Harley_Goldman, @Ed_McGuirk, @Mike_Friel and @Adam_Bolyard thanks for your kind comments.
Adam, I appreciate that you took your time to adjust the image. For me the S-shaped lower parts of the tree trunks where an imortant part of the composition. Hence, I have to think a while regarding your proposed crop. Sometimes time is needed to get rid of a locked-in way of thinking before being able to adopt a suggestion for improvement.
Adam, also thanks for the advise how to get rid of the lense flares, I had no idea how to do that. I will try to remove them even if I have a less advanced post-processing software (Luminar).
@Ola_Jovall,
It’s your vision! I see what you mean by the interesting shapes in the trunk. If you like it and think it adds, then keep it!
As for a less daunting way to correct the flare, you might be able to selectively adjust the white balance in Luminar (I’ve not used that program, so I couldn’t point out how) through a brush adjustment or something to minimize the color shift in the flare areas.
Ola,
This is wonderful! Very well scene - great eye to spot this. I too was caught wondering if this was a reflection - or what was this? Clearly a tree, yet quite abstract; the leaves really add another dimension and as others have commented - could be fireflies. Very cool.
Too bad the flare detracts a bit. I tried to mitigate with some selective saturation/color changes, burning, painting and a couple other basic adjustments. It’s been reduced, but still there; not sure many would notice unless looking for. Also isolated and bumped up the backlit leaves to separate a little more too. Tweaked the blue a little too - of course personal preference there.
I like the crop as presented. Certainly an image worth tweaking! Great one!
@Lon_Overacker, thanks for taking your time to process the image further. The image got a lot better when the flares has been reduced as you show. I will try to replicate the changes you have applied.
