Subtle

I took this the other day while Mike and I were out looking for some spring color and never processed it thinking no one would like an image with all these brown tones. Since then it has grown on me because of the numerous subtle shades of color in the scene along with some wonderful details throughout. At first I was thinking this might be to busy so I tried to space the trees out around the frame and came up with this. I am not sure how much appeal this will have with others so I thought I would throw it out there and see what everyoneā€™s thoughts are.

As always thanks for stopping by and leaving a thought.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

All C&C welcome

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

All C&C welcome

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Nikon D800, Nikon 80-200 @ 112 mm, f 11 @ 1/13 sec, ISO 200, MLU, cable release & tripod

If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ā€˜igā€™ and leave your Instagram username below.

Really nice, Ed. It certainly appeals to me. I love the tones of the image and how you placed a frame around that bush/tree in the middle.

Nice arrangements of elements in the frame. There is a good overall balance. I played with this a bit starting with a modified composition. I donā€™t think my changes are any better. However, when I played with the colors I decided that either I donā€™t respond as well to all the red or I just prefer a different more emotional color cast.

Ed, I think the spacing of the trees is way to get the viewers eye moving around the image.
Color is so subjective, but this looks less red than your prior post, and the colors do look natural for what you get in early spring, which where I live the very early buds are generally red. In this image you have more contrast between red and yellow than you did in the prior post, and it helps IMO.

My eye keeps getting drawn the triangle created by the left most tree, the center tree, and the bush with green/yelllow leaves on the right. @Igor_Doncov rework also plays with a strong inverted triangle shape. I have an alternate crop to consider which plays on the triangle that I mentioned.

1 Like

I think it has a lot of potential. I like what @Ed_McGuirk provided already, but wanted to add something in terms of composition / clean-up.
One of my favorite things to do is ā€œborder patrolā€ on images like this. It involves going around the edges, zoomed in, and looking for distracting elements that pull your eye out of the frame. I think your image has some of that going on and could benefit from that. Hope that helps!

I like this a lot, Ed as presented. i like Igorā€™s crop also, but I definitely prefer your color balance. This is not a ā€œGlance at and move onā€ image. It requires the viewer to actually pay attention, so some will just pass it by, but those who do stop and view will be rewarded with a beautiful shot.

I appreciate everyone @Michael_Lowe, @Igor_Doncov, @Ed_McGuirk, @Matt_Payne and @Bill_Chambers for taking a moment to leave some C&C; always appreciated. It took me a little time to compose this as the scene was quite busy and I had to shoot through some openings of some small scrub trees. In the end I was relatively happy with the end result. There are some reeds and trees with leaves budding out in the BG that I think would be an interesting shot, but there were no trespassing signs so we heeded the signs.

@Igor_Doncov: Thanks for taking the time to do a rework. I like the crop.
@Ed_McGuirk: I appreciate you taking the time to do a repost as I think your crop would also work. Nice to have some options. Good luck with your upcoming spring images.
@Bill_Chambers: I appreciate the kind words as your thoughts pretty much mirror mine on this image. I hope others feel the same way.

This definitely grows on you the more you look at it. I favor a 5:4 ratio cropping off the right side.

Ed,

Iā€™m a bit late here, but have continued to come back to this one. Like John, this one has grown on me.

At first, it just seemed like there was too much going on, no main subject, etc. But now Iā€™ve found contentment just exploring this scene. There are so many neat elements that are contributing to the whole. I like the skinny vertical of the tree/buds on the left with some bg trees above. The sparse, budless thing bottom center seems out of place, yet in the big picture itā€™s another interesting element for the eye to visit. I could go one with all the other elements included buds that are leafing out green in the LR. The more I explore, the more I enjoy.

The only small distraction I see are the darkest trunk right of top center and then the lighter heavy branch breaching the top edge left of center. Not deal killers at all, but kind of picked up with Mattā€™s idea of border patrol.

So glad you decided to photograph and share.

Lon