Rustle of the trees
So quietly there branches
Busy anyway
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.
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
I was just enjoying the peace on this so busy view.
Oh wow, this is really beautiful Ben! I love the chaos in the trees and the warm beautiful light. I also love the gentle curves of the hills and the darker patches in the grass really help add depth to the image.
Gorgeous light! The branches are chaotic, but the overall pattern of the trunks gives this structure, so the chaos is more like a soft pattern. I’m with João on those lighter grasses in the lower right. It looks like you cropped/framed this to a pano already, so I wouldn’t be inclined to crop any more. Maybe just darkening and desaturating them a bit. Lovely scene.
This is the kind of image that begs to be seen very large to really appreciate the details in the beauty of the chaos depicted in those branches. My only suggestion would be to do a slight color balance on the shadows as it seems to have a subtle green cast to them.
I’m coming to the conclusion that you have your own private nature preserve and you are the only one allowed to see it. It must be the only explanation how you continue to see and photograph these scenes. And I hope the western thinking translates to a compliment for you! Said another way, you have a great vision in framing ordinary and most often like this one, chaotic scenes, in to pieces of art.
As mentioned, the light is beautiful and it’s simply amazing how that mess of twigs and branches, when viewed from a far, become such a unifying element.
Your repost is quite excellent. And I almost feel like I shouldn’t even attempt an edit here… but alas, can’t help myself. Great job on the bottom grasses in your edit. In my edit I simply toned down the brighter mound in a masked saturation layer reducing red sat and brightness. I also dropped the brightest values in a brights TK Levels Mask. And for the color balance, the same TK mask on a Color Balance adj layer moving the Magenta-green slider for the highlights a few points towards magenta. Very subtle - in fact I wouldn’t have noticed anything except for Youssef’s observation.
I also cropped slightly from the top to remove a couple of small patches of bright background. And lastly a slight vignette. Again, not sure this is an improvement to your edits…
@Lon_Overacker , Lon, in dutch we say ( hart stikke be dankt) the same as Thank you so much for your long explanations , thoughts and edit !
As I place both reworks next to each other in photoshop. Yours has more red in it, and because of that more depth and is a bit livelier.
Mine is more of one color. But has in my opinion no green color cast The trees and the whole environment there is greenish
I find both reworks OK
Gorgeous, all of them! You do have a magical miniature forest here – I hope to see it in many future versions of the light nature provides. It’s never the same twice.
Great image, Ben! I really like how you by using the light and framing have made this rather chaotic part of the nature to become a very pleasent image. One idea that I think already has been stated is to darken a tad the FG strip of grass. In addition to the tress and the major backlit grass strip in the middle of the image I also like the baklit tuft of grass in front of the treeline.
Said another way, you have a great vision in framing ordinary and most often like this one, chaotic scenes, in to pieces of art.
