I shot this scene on a morning walk recently. Been having a tough time finding/creating new work even though I have been going out on walks in a couple new forests. Anyways, I forced myself to get the camera out of the bag for this image and while I felt like I was just going through the motions at the time, when I saw this image on the computer I thought maybe it wasn’t such a bad find. It isn’t a crazy stunning image, but it certainly shows the dense and chaotic forest that represents those walks around my home quite well!
Does the composition work well for you, and I processed it in a fairly straightforward way, but is there anything that processing-wise you would do to improve?
And that’s what matters most, that the image speaks to you in some way that means something personal to you. For such a cluttered environment you did a pretty good job of organizing the chaos, a telephoto lens is great for that. the repetition of the horizontal line of the tree trunks creates some structure in the scene. The foggy background and your high key processing creates a soft and gentle feeling in the image.
While i think the image works as presented, I go back and forth on whether the horizontal branch near the bottom is a framing element or a distraction. I could also see a more panoramic crop that eliminates the branch.
I too was wondering about including the horizontal branch or cropping it out. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts as I will play around a bit more with crops to see if there is a better composition in there somewhere. Thanks Ed!
Kyle, very nice image. I quite like it. There’s a balance in the background trunks—one large on the left and several small on the right. There’s nice light and atmosphere. And the layering between the colorful, spindly branches in the foreground offer a certain contrast to the darker trunks behind. The only thing I’d offer up for your consideration would be the idea of cloning out some of the bright yellow leaves at the lower edge. My eye started at the lower left. These were a bit of a distraction to my eye, leading you out of the frame at the bottom before you get into see the rest of the woodland goodness. Thanks for sharing!
I took a look at it with a 16x9 crop and it actually ends up falling just above the horizontal branch and bright leaves, so that may be worth exploring. I also would be interested in a little more contrast in the foreground trees. I messed with it a bit and it seemed like I was able to add that contrast to the trees while still maintaining the atmosphere in the back half of the image.
Kyle,
I do not mind the limb along the bottom edge of the frame as I think it helps frame the image. I tried a crop of it and it just did not have the same feel to me. You did a wonderful job of making some order out of what had to be a very chaotic scene. The greens and yellows work very nicely together and the atmospherics with the light fog soften the BG beautifully helping keep the focus on the main grouping of trees. My only suggestion; and this is being very picky; would be to clone out those couple of yellow leaves that are touching the bottom edge of the frame. Wonderful image!
I love this sort of intimate landscape, and I find this one is very appealing. I could go either way about the bottom branch, but cropping it out gives a more abstract image that I like. Cropped or not, I always feel that border patrol strengthens an image.
This is such a lovely setting, I’d be tempted to play with a subtle amount of Glamour Glow just to see if it brought out more magic.
Thank you Adam for the feedback! I can certainly see how the branch could draw the eye away from the image. I never would have noticed the bottom edge leaves being a distraction either!
Very well done Kyle. You have the randomness of nature in the fg and the vertical structure in the bg. The contrast of the two makes this image interesting. Kudos for seeing that and capturing it as a coherent image.
