I was at the park with my wife and son and noticed the bark on this tree. I liked the sweeping curves and the two circular patches. I looked at some other parts of the tree and framed them up first but came back to this at the end as it was my favorite patch. It reminded me a bit of all the ice images I have seen over the past few months so I edited it to have a slightly cooler feel than the original white balance.
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I am wondering if the small brown circle is distracting. I left it in for now but could easily remove it. I tend to leave things unless they really need removed, this is on the boarder for me. Is it too cool? Am I missing something, I feel like it is close to being a pretty good edit, but something just doesn’t feel quite finished.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: Yes
Focus stack of three images to get everything as sharp as possible. I used the focus stack option in PS.
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Yes, these types of compositions are not as easy as they look. When I clicked on the largest version I was amazed at how rich the texture is in this bark. To me that’s a clue to move in for a closer composition and really show off that texture.
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Fair point, I think what drew me initially was the sweeping line on the left and mostly the two “dots” toward the right. I’m not sure if I could have incorporated all of that, maybe a crop with one of the circles highlighted could work.
Now this is one good way to simplify the complexity of shooting in the forest. This is really quite nice David, as Igor mentioned the texture is wonderful. But I also like how you have a two toned color palette with the dark gray and the silver. I also find the composition to very interesting, with all of the edge splotches being only partially shown, but then juxtaposed against the complete splotches in the center. That is a very clever way to choose to display the pattern of the splotches, very creative thinking on your part. Nicely done 
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Thank you! I was torn with how hard to push the contrast, normally I lean more heavily toward more contrast but I tried to keep from going too far with this one. I also thought about it as a true black and white as there isn’t a ton of color to begin with, but I think I’m generally pretty happy with it as is. I could see processing it in a high key black and white. When I pushed the contrast it got pretty harsh because there are essentially only 2-3 tones in the image. Thanks for checking it out!
David,
I also find your choice of for the placements of the ovals very interesting and it works nicely for me. Tree bark is such a fascinating subject as you have demonstrated so well.
No suggestions, well done.
@Alan_Kreyger Yes, I could see spending hours looking for and shooting different compositions with different types of trees. One of the good things I think I figured out with this one is that shooting the shaded side of the tree would allow you to essentially shoot at any time during the day.
Thanks for checking it out!
