For some reason, these two little leaves caught my eye as I was wading in a local creek a couple years ago. I’ve sat on this every since because there was something that bugged me about my processing of it. I recently came back to it and started over with a different crop. Initially, I had a 4:5 ratio, thinking that the leaves needed to be the main event. And maybe they are, but the big part of the story is the water flowing over them. To that end, I re-cropped to 16:9 (or thereabouts). I certainly feels more dynamic now.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any comments welcome. This has been flipped horizontally and I think I like that better because your eye now travels to the most interesting part, rather than stopping right as you enter frame left. Thoughts on that would be appreciated.
Technical Details
a7r3, 105mm, 1/100s, f/8, ISO 400. Dodging, burning, cloning over a blah spot in the ULC, color adjustments.
How the heck did I miss this? An uptick in participation here on NPN is nice, but I need to pay more attention! I like the idea of this, but wonder if the leaves are getting a bit lost. Mainly it’s the green streak coming in from the left. It sort of points to the leaves, but it’s pretty prominent. The flowing water aspect could be emphasized maybe by connecting that green bit to the other one on the right near the lower leaf. Creating a hook shape leading from the left of the green streak, curving around the two leaves and ending up with the bottom leaf. Hm…let me have a crack at it in Photoshop.
Now I look at it, this might be going in a direction you didn’t want to take, but FWIW -
@Kris_Smith thanks for the ideas. Your version is more eye catching and I like your idea about the greens (pesky algae). I’d been thinking that I needed to bring up the left side (more lights, more clarity), but didn’t consider saturation for the greens. I had a go at implementing your suggestions - posted above, along with yours for comparison. Thanks!
Great image, Bonnie. One possibility in line with your idea to emphasize a dynamic flow could be to flip the image, and rotate it slightly, to have the water to flow from ULC to LRC. See example below.
Thanks, @Ola_Jovall. The water flow is actually from the LRC to the ULC in your version, which is the original orientation. I was thinking that most of the interest was in the leaves and the ripples they created, so I flipped it to have that on the right side (so the viewer’s eye wouldn’t stop immediately upon entering the frame from the left).
Oh I like your new version, Bonnie. I think I darkened it too much and so I thought I took it to a place you hadn’t wanted. Seems and improvement to me. So hard to catch this kind of thing in a 2D image. What we see and process in the field can be so different and have so many qualities that just don’t translate. I really like your shallow pool work. I wish our streams weren’t tannic.
