The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
We has some nice early morning sun yesterday and I went out to photograph some other things but got caught by a couple of little patches of mushrooms (little as in the caps were less than 1 cm across in even the largest).
Specific Feedback
I cleaned up what I thought were the most distracting elements, but left some others that didn’t bother me much since these things are buried in the ground cover that we call our lawn (if you look closely you might find a blade or two of grass). Does the messiness bother you? I used the TK “Make it glow” function on the mushrooms-is it too much?
Technical Details
Sony A7Riv, FE70-200 f/4 Macro @ 200 mm, camera on ground, hand held focus stack (17 images) @f/18, 1/200, iso 500. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 6180 square.
I don’t mind messy images, that’s what nature often is. We don’t always need to “improve” that. So I certainly like the overall image. I must say that the lawn looks familiar to me, although I might have a little bit more grass.
Maybe I had cut away the grass blade and the brown “thing” that cross each other at the stem of the tallest mushroom.
The glow of the mushrooms isn’t too much for me.
The focus stack looks good to my untrained eye, but @Kris_Smith is the expert :-).
This is really neat, Dennis, with the water drops and the “mess” as you call it. I’m amazed if the caps of the mushrooms were 1 cm or less, that they even caught your attention. I’m wondering about a 4X5 crop from the bottom. The one off to it’s self in the bottom left and even the very bottom portion of the frame doesn’t really add to the scene to me. Just a thought. I am totally good with this as presented.
Your lawn looks just like mine! Lots of clover and “weeds” and mushrooms. I swear there were a ton of these all over in late fall this year. I love the water droplets and no, I don’t think the Make it Glow effect is too strong. I use that one a lot and just dial it in by opacity strength. I see a couple of overlap artifacts in the stack, but nothing egregious and since it’s kind of part of the deal with grassy photos, I don’t think it’s easily avoided. Since the scene is very busy to begin with, I might have eliminated the mushroom just down left and the bit of brown grass below as well. With one color (green), the inherent business isn’t too bad, but the introduction of browns and tans does make it worse IMO. A scroll crop takes that off the table, but more room at the bottom is better in terms of balance. Oh and I like the sidelight, too. Brings up so much texture!
I really like the isolation and the color/tone of the mushrooms!
It’s balanced just enough to almost ignore the chaos of the blades of grass and the waterdrops add to the scene nicely!
I’m a little on the fence about whether or not to clone out the small mushroom in the LLC, it works as is though
Thanks, @Kris_Smith, @Merv, @Shirley_Freeman, @Han_Schutten . I’ve cropped the image to get rid of the offending intruder in the lower left and removed some more dead wood. Posted at the top.
