The photographer is looking for deeper feedback connected to their intent, creative direction, and specific questions.
Please comment on artistic and technical aspects. I welcome your suggestions and comments, so please be candid.
Camera: SONY ILCE-7RM5
Lens: FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS
Focal length: 56mm
Shutter speed: 1/125s
Aperture: f/13
ISO: 640
I like it very much, I like forest images of this kind. Backlit background in light colors brings nice contrast vs a darker main object. The silhuette of the tree (is it a spruce?) is just perfect and surrounded by birches is even more distinct. It’s important to me that there is some kind of order in your image of an environment chaotic by nature.
I guess you didn’t have much choice regarding the position of your camera. I’d like to see a bit more ground but it would require a bit wider frame. Maybe pointing your camera just a little to the right would eliminate that small piece of wood in the low left corner but then the 1st birch on the right would move to the center. Maybe it can be removed now.
Did you use a polarizer? It might eliminate the glow on leaves present esp in the low right corner or maybe using a mask would help now.
I would try to darken just a touch the farthest layer of the background, I mean the backlit foliage, by changing the green/yellow color. I can’t do it, so I’m not sure if it’s worth the effort but I would try to make the spruce a little more dominant if it’s possible at all.
These are just minor things. Your image is well done as is and shows a real forest gem.
[1] piece of wood
[2] glowing leaves
Matt, you’ve done a fine job of isolating this tall evergreen in the midst of it’s forest surroundings. The mix of bright background and tree trunks set it off well. It’s quite minor, but burning-in that brightest streak in the lower right would let it fit better with the rest of the foreground.
Matthew, I see this is your second image here. I missed seeing the first one so I’ll use this one to say welcome to NPN!
You have captured a lovely scene by centering this tall thin (typical teenager) tree against the Aspen trunks. @JacekZielinski has a good point about the brighter FG leaves – small points like that can make a good image even better. Another thought is to perhaps tone down the blue sky just a bit. It may be realistic for a clear day at high elevation but it grabs my eye a bit and feels like it came from just a bit too much push of Vibrance. I do love the yellow color of the BG foliage, though. All in all, a lovely image!
Jacek, Thanks for the detailed comments. They’re very helpful.
Mark and Diane, thanks for your suggestions. Both the bright area bottom/right and the blue sky are distracting. I’ll fix both.
Mathew, another fine post. Good to see you staying involved. I love it. I agree with the others that you did a fine job of isolating that pine amongst the aspen grove. It’s a great looking tree to be sure. It’s got great form. I like that just the tips of some of the branches are bring lit and that it falls in front of those aspen getting the full glow treatment in the background. Yep, the use of a polarizer would help eliminate some of the specular highlights in this scene, particularly in the foreground bottom right corner and left corner.
This is just a personal observation but I feel like there is a lot of warmth in the scene and perhaps a yellow colorcast. The aspen trunks are a little bit on the yellow side for me, again, personal preference. I did a really quick rework removing some of the warmth from the whole scene and particularly the tree trunks selectively using the eye dropper tool in LR. I also worked a little bit on the bright spots mentioned and the sky. I also brightened the other pine trees a bit so they didn’t compete so much with the big pine in the center. Losing this much warmth may not be to your liking which is totally understandable. Just another option.
Keep them coming, Mathew!
Thanks, David. The corrections are lovely. I’ll incorprate them into my version.
