This shot was taken the last time I was in the Redwoods a few years ago in 2015 to shoot the rhododendrons and to visit the lost coast. It was my first time there as a photographer and I was simply blown away by the beauty of it all and the sheer size and age of the redwood trees. As I was hiking along a trail in the Del Norte forest shooting fog beams in the other direction I turned to head down the trail and this scene of chaos and destruction with the redwoods was standing before me. I thought it depicted the life cycle of a forest within a forest. Thanks for looking and commenting.
I took some of the suggestions from many of the replies and re posted an updated image. I dropped the luminance of the fog quite a bit, I cropped the left side of the image to eliminate the mid ground tree trunk, I evened up the highlights and shadows along the bottom, cooled down the fog with a hue and temperature change and finally I popped the contrast a little bit in the right leaning deadfall. Thoughts. This one needed a lot of work. Thanks for all the suggestions.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any artistic feedback is appreciated.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
D810, 28mm, 24-120mm lens, ISO 400, 1/6 @ F/14 (it was dark)
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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Thanks for posting this image David, it really caught my eye. The old growth redwoods of the north coast are spectacular (and also are my home), and I think a great deal of the allure and magic is in the snags and deadfall like this, that you find in a truly wild forest.
For the image, I think the lower left corner bright green spot is distracting to the eye, potentially including the brown fern in that is a bit tight to the frame. I think your visual interest is really in the highlights on the central trunks and snags, and you could potentially play that up with some additional processing. Further to that end, you might also consider darkening the foggy background to further reinforce the central subject.
Overall, I do like the image and I always appreciate non-traditional subjects and points of view. Fog beams are great but there is much more to appreciate in these magical forests!
This does depict the life cycle of the forest beautifully, David. The lighting throughout the scene is sublime, particularly that on the decaying stump. I also like your low POV along with the foggy atmospherics in the BG trees as it makes for a wonderful backdrop. Did you happen to get any comps where you moved a little more to the right? I ask because I find myself wishing that the stump did not intersect with the tree on the right side. I could also see the greens in the LLC brought down just a touch, but not to much as it is a nice touch. Thanks for sharing this inviting woodland scene.
David, this is an excellent example of a deep forested scene. We all see things a bit different and it just depends on what draws our attention, or not. With that said I like this as presented unless you have other compositions or maybe a vertical take also. Regardless, this looks very good to me and my only thought for change is to crop in from the right to exclude the narrow tree in the BG. I think that tightens the scene up a bit and places more emphasis back on the FG larger trees and stumps.
David, the the lighting really lets the foreground greens and those broken pieces stand out. Having the fog in the back also helps keep the focus where you wanted it. This is a fine “out take story” from a heavy forest.
I spent some time on this and made changes that came into my head. Some are better than others.
I felt that although the right side had some really beautiful components in that fog they were ‘watering down’ the message. So I cropped them off. I’m still not sure about this.
I felt that the tree on the far left was better left out have have a nice light outline for the left tree.
As others have mentioned the bright vegetation in the lower left needed work. I dropped it’s luminance, saturation, cloned and cropped.
The angled deadfall is the star of the show so I raised it’s highlights to add contrast. This is the one change (besides the plants at the bottom) that I feel best about.
Pick and choose which changes you like and don’t like. In the end my theory is that you intended to shoot the dead fall but then you realized that sapling on the right had a nice curve and decided to include it as well. And then things started to extend to the right.
Igor, you are right about the right side. I thought at the time that I really liked the sapling on the right edge but it also makes the composition a little bit of a compromise. To balance the scene I thought I had to include the midground tree on the very left but after seeing your rendition I think cropping that out works pretty well. The bright part of the foreground definitely needed some work. SUn was hitting it hard and is an eye magnet. All in all, a very nice redo Igor although I really do like that sapling on the right hand side. Thanks for all of your effort in this. Much improved. It sure needed some work.
David, this image wonderfully conveys the mystery of the Redwoods, Lots of living and dying going on there. Fine exposure for the fog and for the forest details. I wish I were there with you.,
You have received a lot of cropping thoughts, but my favorite tinkering of this uses a crop closer to your original.
I gave a little more saturation and hopefully texture to the lhs tree; I like it as an anchor, but it appeared on my screen as a grey block. That said, I took off a little of the lhs of the tree in my final crop.
I muted the llc thimbleberry and added a few more mottled bright areas across the bottom, consistent I think with the beautiful mottled light you caught on the trees.
I like the trees on the rhs, (especially the spindly, light-searching yew tree) but felt the need to burn that area as the fog seemed too bright to be on an edge … yeah I also trimmed a little of that rhs also.
A beautiful image, David, and I think your repost is a vast improvement. You also generated a tremendous amount of interesting discussion with this one.
Thank you Denis and Dick and everyone. This image needed some work. Love your rendition of this Dick. My favorite so far. Better than my repost. A lot better. I think you nailed it. I cooled my repost down too much losing some of the pop that you have retained and the crop is the best of both worlds on both sides. Thanks so much for this. I am going to rework this again and try and get close to what you got here. This is why this forum is so good.
