The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic / Expressive
About This Image
Late fall foliage combined with an errant sprinkler and a cold night enabled me to come across this leaf encased in a tomb of ice. There were several trees covered in icicles from the water that froze overnight, so it was just a matter of looking around for some isolated sections in the chaos of the scene before me.
Feedback Requested
I cropped the original image to eliminate some distractions around the edges of the frame. I then used an adjustment brush to darken around the periphery to reduce any distractions that cropping didn’t take care of. Any suggestions of what else I could do here would be appreciated. Thanks.
Technical Details
Camera: Canon EOS 80D
Lens: EF-S18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Focal length: 56mm
Shutter speed: 1/1000s
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 800
Processing software:Adobe Lightroom
Major adjustments:Cropping and adding a dark vignette using an adjustment brush.
Blending/stacking:
Other notes:
Ted: An interesting subject indeed. From the thumbnail and your title I thought this might be amber with a bug trapped inside. The ice texture is what gets my attention and I would have been tempted to get in a lot tighter and perhaps fill the frame with the yellow and some of the light gradations. Still a very nice find and good take on the conditions. >=))>
ed, the details in the ice are great. The glow from the leaf makes is definitely eye catching. I find such events challenging because I’m torn between showing the larger picture (icy leaf with icicles) and going in close to get the detailed structures in the ice. I’m with @Bill_Fach in thinking that closer could be more dramatic. There is so much happening in each little crystal in area [A1] with the local glow details as each ice crystal acts like a tiny lens. I do notice the sharpness fall off towards the lower right corner. Given your shutter speed, you could easily have gone to f/16 for more dof. This view does look good with the bright yellow glow coming through the ice.
What a great find! I love images like this, and while I didn’t initially see a leaf (more like a bottle of bourbon with condensation), I like it as an abstract as much as a sign of seasons changing.
Aside from the softness mentioned above, I find that lower right corner pulls my eye away from the more interesting parts of the image, I can imagine a square crop that removes the bottom and right edges. Of course, that removes the subtle hints of a leaf edge too, so it might take this in a direction you aren’t keen on.
Regardless, lovely image, and a good one to tag as abstract too (for future reference).
), I like it as an abstract as much as a sign of seasons changing.