This park is one of my favorite local forested areas to hike in. It’s easy to slow down and look around for some interesting compositions. I found the symmetry of these ponderosa pines intriguing as they fade into the distance towards the back of the frame.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
Any general opinions are always welcome. Specifically, I would like to know if anyone thinks the forest floor is too bright and should be darkened, or if the branches extending into the frame on the left are distracting. Thanks.
I can totally see why this caught your attention. Is it a natural arrangement? Often foresters here plant red pine in areas that have had the forest trees harvested. Those plantations often have a more regular row structure, but look very like this.
Being in a playful mood, I brought this into Photoshop for a little bit of tinkering which to me, gets to the heart of this image and simplifies it a bit. Hope you like it -
I think it keeps our eyes in the center of the photo and I used a bunch of masking in ACR to achieve that as well as reducing the overall exposure and playing with the curves panel to open the mid tones a bit. If you ever revisit the area, I wonder if it’s possible to get higher up and have a more minimalist look at the forest floor where the trunks are laid out with the most separation. Could be worth exploring.
I like the crop you have done here as it does simplify the image. Looks like a 16x9, which is an aspect ratio I use quite a bit. I’m pretty sure this is a totally natural arrangement-it’s located in Shevlin Park in Bend, Oregon. I might try your suggestion of photographing this area from a higher vantage point as there is another trail that gets you there. Thanks for your feedback.
One alternative would be to crop off 40% from the top and present this as a panorama. That would bring the forest floor as one of two horizontal layers intersected by numerous verticals. That, in my opinion, would be a strong design.
This looks just like what portions of Yosemite Valley look like - the trees and undergrowth have gone through some controlled burns in recent times. I really like how you’ve framed this and eliminated most all of the extra curriculars that might deter from the nature story. I say most, because my main feedback would also be a crop like the others, but mainly to remove or reduce the presence of the encroaching branches/tree on the left. While not a huge distraction, I think as Kris mentions, a crop would simplify things even more - I like her crop.
Otherwise, I really like what you’ve seen here, captured and presented.
This image certainly tells a story. Looks like a control burn as the fire never got very far up the trunk. However, it does look like maybe the burn killed those trees. Hard to say without seeing the tops of them. You have great symmetry although I find the background trees too sharp and a distraction. There are so many dead branches that is becomes really busy. Not sure what aperture you shot this at but this but this would have been a good candidate for a wide open f/2.8-f/4 or so. I also agree with @Matt_Payne about the distraction on the bottom of the frame. Easy enough to clean up. The forest floor may be slightly to bright but again easy enough to fix. I hope you don’t mind but I played around with this image as I think it’s quite interesting and did a pano crop and also a crop from the left and the top to remove the branches coming in from the left side. I also burned the forest floor, removed some of the distractions, and tried to make the background less sharp with better falloff. To do that, I added -44 negative dehaze, -40 sharpening, +33 noise reduction, and -7 clarity. I also reduced the tint to remove a little purple colorcast. This of course may not be what you envisioned so please, take this with a grain of salt.
Thanks for taking the time to rework this image David. I’m glad you found it interesting. Although I liked this image out of camera, I posted it for critique because I also had some questions about how it might be improved. It’s a great learning experience to have others look at one of your images and suggest alternative ways to process it.
