I live in Central California and am fascinated by Giant Sequoia Trees. I spent 2 hours in the early morning exploring different views, levels, and compositions of this one group of trees. I tried to capture the nearly 3,000 years of age, beauty and scars of life, as well as the majestic that these trees are that starts at the foot.
Heard about this forum on the F-Stop Collaberate & Listen Podcast Episode 120 with Paul Marcellini talking about about this forum and identified with working in his regional area and sharing the beauty of it.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Any Feed Back is welcome
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any Feedback is encouraged and welcomed
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Took this with an Olympous Pen7 / Olympus M 14-42 at 35mm / f5.6 / ISO 100 / 1/8 sec exposure
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Welcome to NPN Ken. I think you’ve got a great idea for an image here. The base and roots of a tree often make great compositions. There is good texture here and good tone variability. The composition isn’t quite there yet. I find it busy and I think it’s the roots in the lrc that are mainly the cause of it.
The other issue are the hot spots. Bright light on trees can work in the composition but it’s not that common in my opinion. That’s primarily because the sun moves and the composition breaks down during the photo setup. The best light for these comps are diffused light and it that’s unavailable then when all is in shadow. So I think shooting this at a different time of day would have helped. You could try burning in the hot areas in PS and see how natural it comes out. They may be recoverable.
I like the comp, but would agree with Igor about the hot highlights pulling attention. Also, I would burn down the brghter stick leaving the frame along the bottom right, as I find that an eye magnet.
Welcome Ken, I think you’ll find a great home here.
I love your take on this and I think you succeeded nicely in accomplishing the capture you were after. My only nits mirror those of others, the hot spots. I downloaded your image and played with that a little and I think it helped. It’s attached. Since they were pretty much without detail, I first used Select color range to corral just the areas I wanted to darken, then changed the blending mode to Multiply and chose a similar color to what I thought they should be and brushed in the color. After that, I burned here and there to give it a more natural appearance rather than just a flat color. It’s attached.
Welcome to NPN! This is a fantastic first post - I love this image.
Your vision with this is excellent! It’s clear to me that your fascination and passion for these trees has allowed you to “see” and create a composition and image that is unique and tells a grand story. I’m impressed with the vision here. The immense grandeur of the giants are hinted at with the main trunk’s base - “the feet” . The inclusion of the glimpse of the root system is important and that you included the selective focus burn scar of the secondary tree in the background, is even more important. Putting this all together really makes for a strong and outstanding Giant Sequoia image. I can’t say I’ve seen another image like this.
So… my only constructive criticism has been pointed out. All this image needs is some fine tuning addressing some hot spots and just paying close attention to those “eye magnets.” the one I’ll point out is especially minor… but there’s a very bright spot on the right edge above center. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but a small thing to consider, especially if printing or publishing… (the other brighter areas already mentioned.
You most certainly have an image worth making those extra minor tweaks to turn a great image to an outstanding one.
