Microcosm!

Image Critiques Landscape Critiques
1

Microscape
Microscape1920×1105 2.7 MB

What technical feedback would you like if any? What do you think about this one? Its an abstract and might look better as a black and white image. I cropped this one to position the leaf and snow up in the LH corner.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Any pertinent technical details: D500 850 mm (600 mm + 1.4 TC, 1/1000 sec at f8.0, Iso 1600) Levels, luminosity masks on midtones, Shadows & Highlights, Crop for comp…Jim![Microscape|690x397]

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
2

Jim,

Took me a bit to wrap my head around this one. At first glance I thought these were shells on a beach or something, but then the snow didn’t jive, and then I saw the tree bark peeking through.

I think you did well with your crop and positioning of the snow/leaf. There’s quite a lot going on with all the fungi details and I think perhaps a further crop might help simplify things. Like maybe a square crop keeping the snow/leaf off-center.

I’m also impressed you got all the detail and depth considering the lens focal length, etc. Let me guess, you were out photographing birds/wildlife and came across this? Otherwise, wondering why not use something like 180mm macro. Was it not possible to get closer? No biggie

Anyway, processing looks good and I like all the detail. Just a bit busy perhaps, but thankfully you’ve got the patch of snow and leaf. I’m not sure if a b&w would be an improvement.

Lon

3

Hi Lon,

Thank you for the critique. I was being bombarded with chickadees and saw the fungi covered log. I saw the leaf and all of those nice shadows and decided to give it a go. The 600 and teleconverter are not conventional weapons of choice for these macro-scapes. I can try a square crop too. I think that this would look better when taken under cloudy, wet conditions…Jim

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Jim, this one does take some time to wrap your head around. As Lon alluded, it is a bit busy for my taste. I brought it into PS and tried some B&W conversions, but couldn’t come up with any that worked well. In terms of evaluating this as an abstract pattern image, I think darkening the shadows would create some contrast and make the pattern stand out more. This is definitely a case where you need an element to break up the pattern, and give your eye a place to rest. The oak leaf and snow provide that break, but I think the image would be stronger in they were in the lower corner of the composition, instead of the upper left corner. When i compose patterns like this, I usually find myself looking from left to right, and I prefer that pattern breaker to be on the right. Just my $0.02 here.