This is an aspen scene from a Montana backroad. Any thoughts, suggestions or critiques are always welcome.
D810, 70-200mm
Harley, this is a great shot of these trees. I love the transition in color from bold yellow, to yellow/green mix and then the strong green of the fir trees. And it’s amazing how uniform the color is in each of those three layers of trees. Exposure and contrast look dead on, I’m not sure there is much that I would want to change in this one. I initially thought it might help to clone away the three small clumps of vegetation dead center in the grass, but ultimately concluded that I like it better the way it is presented. Nice study in contrasting colors here.
Harley, the tonal change from platinum blond at the bottom to dark green at the top looks great. It’s also neat that each element falls in a band across the frame. My only thought is that cropping to pano to have the amount of dark green at the top similar to the amount of grass at the bottom might be nice.
Wonderful layering and beautiful mix of colors. Nicely seen, Harley. Processing looks good and the comp. works well as presented. Alternatively, I can see a great pano option, reducing the back layer of dark evergreens.
Harley, I’m liking the simple layers of primary color, good illustration that so often less is more. And you got a good mix in progression of the season. Seems that my eye bounces over to the abrupt lack of trees at far LHS. Just a tiny crop fixes that. Another thing is that I believe it could benefit from a little tweak with shadow/highlight or some other method to bring out the darker evergreens. I’m confident there’s some nice lush greenery in the shadows there begging for some attention. Mark’s suggestion is interesting. Maybe a hair less at top and a hair more at bottom would make for good balance.
Another vote for a more horizontal format. Since all the elements are uninterrupted horizontal layers I would use a format that complements the composition. I would also try to not center the trees as much, although I can’t come up with a good crop at this time.
Harley,
As others have mentioned, I like the layers here. And to that point, I’m thinking of a slight crop off the top to give the pines an equal weight to the grasses at the bottom.
Only nitpick would be to clone out the long “stick” bottom center next to the small pine sapling. Not sure what it is, but my eye went right to it when opening up the post.
Otherwise, colors, processing look good. Like it!
Lon
Very well seen, exposure, contrast and saturation are right one. I am sort of against images rendered too antiseptic by cloning stuff out (other than sensor dust, the odd beer can or candy wrapper, etc.) so I would not clone the sticks out. Yes, they attract a bit of attention but for me it is only momentary, I immediately go back to the “big picture” - which works very well. Just my perspective, I guess.
Very nice layers of color and texture, Mr. H. I agree that a slight crop off the top would be interesting to see. It might also be interesting to see if you can pull any detail out of the shadows of the conifers. I am in the ‘clone the sticks’ camp. My eye went right to them. Other than that, this works very nicely, and you did a fine job processing this.
-P