Two oaks I found on a rare foggy morning with snow. I can’t remember the last time we had both snow and fog at the same time here in Missouri, so it was a great chance to get out and explore one of my favorite local areas.
Specific Feedback Requested
What’s your impression of the image?
What story does it convey?
I’d appreciate any feedback about processing and feel of the photo. I’m particularly interested if anyone sees any weird color cast. I went back and forth in how I felt about it as I processed it. There was a fair amount of cloud this day which created a bluish cast in reality. I tried to keep it pretty true to what I saw while toning down the blue a bit.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
X-T4 with the 16-55 mm at 40mm, ISO 160, f/11
Basic exposure adjustments in C1 and then in Ps I made contrast adjustments, color adjustments, dodging/burning the front tree and a slight Orton masked out in the area of the front tree.
Looks to me like a scene i wish I would be in. I think the temperature is just fine.
Just a thought, but the branches running off to the left pull me away from the nicely receding line of trees. Also seems to havea bunch of foreground that does the same. You might consider a crop.
Lucky you, these are marvelous conditions and you took great advantage of them. There is an awful lot to like about this image.
The WB looks great to me, keeping the fog cool-ish adds to the winter feeling. And you nailed the near/far, sharp/soft contrast thing. These two trees also have tremendous character. The sinuous shapes of their limbs makes me think of two octopus dueling each other. The trees almost have a sense of motion to them like an octopus waving their tentacles. Pretty neat…
I think the image works very well as presented. On a purely subjective level, I could see a slight crop from the bottom, I think it would make the trees even stronger looking. If you maintained the aspect ratio, it would allow you to tweak how some of these limbs exit the frame too.
Thank you for the feed back on color and crop. I’ve played around with the crop some and find that I like bringing it up from the bottom 1/3 to 1/2 from the bottom to the foreground tree to give the bottom of the tree a bit of breathing room. I think I like the left side close to where I presented it initially. I like showing more of the foreground tree to give more of an idea of the echo in form between the two. Ed, I like your analogy to an octopus. It really looks like the tentacles are flailing uncontrollably. Maybe I’ll name this one something like Snowy Medusae
