An interesting and beautiful tree outside of Sedona, AZ. I suspect it’s a Juniper, but I’m not sure.
I tried to shoot this like a landscape, in order to keep those rocks in the background in focus.
All feedback is welcome.
Shot with a Nikon DSLR with a mid-range zoom. Exposure was 1/160sec at f/14, ISO 180. Focal length was 48mm.
What a gorgeous tree. I can see why you were attracted to it. I also like that butte on the left and the agave rising in front of it. I think small additions like that really add to the main subject. The orange is pretty strong in the tree and fg but that works pretty well. Actually, if you backed off on the orange on the fg and bushes the tree may ‘leap forward’ even more, as it’s doing from the distant mountains. I would do a very small crop off the right and the bottom. Also the background mountain is lighter in the gap between the branches on the right than the surrounding mountains. It could be a natural occurrence that just coincidentally matches the outline of the branches but it looks a bit strange. I like this image very much as is. These are just suggestions.
Thanks Igor! Great suggestions. I’ll look in to adjusting the foreground as you suggested, as well as the exposure on the background mountain.
As Igor said, I can see the intrigue of this tree. If you are there again, keep playing with it; I expect you will find some wonderful close-up abstracts in its gnarly texture.
I think the agave would be nicer if you could somehow get rid of the golf cart and rider in that area. A picture within the image is also available by cropping out sky as well as earth.
Thanks for the feedback Dick! Good catch regarding that distraction on the left side. This was taken in a somewhat remote area that was only accessible with off-road vehicles (the ‘Pink Jeep Tour’, if you’re familiar with that area). So I’m not sure that’s a golf cart, but now that you mention it, that is what it sort of looks like! Anyway, I agree it’s a distraction, so I’ll work on removing it. Thanks again!
Aren’t trees wonderful. You have certainly captured this beauty most creatively. I agree with @Igor_Doncov’s suggestions, especially cutting down the orange saturation. Wonderful image.
Thanks Larry, and thanks again everyone. Here’s a re-post of the updated image, with adjustments to the exposure of the background mountain, the distraction on the left removed, and the orange coloring of the foreground reduced.
Interesting and pleasing image. I really like the tree textures and how it fills the frame. I only have few suggestions. There seems to be a vertical branch from what is probably another tree slightly to the right of the center. It seems distracting to me. I may have cloned it out. I may also have cropped or darkened the foreground little to bring even more attention to the beautiful tree.
Thanks Izzy! I’ll look in to that.
