[Charlotte]

Looking for honest C + C on this one please.



Thanks for looking

[stupot]

I keep coming back to this one Charlotte, i cant quite put my finger on it but i'm not too keen on the composition of this one. Two things strike me, one is my eyes get lost in the mass of fallen leaves in the bottom two thirds of the picture with nothing to fix my eye on which leads me on to my second observation is that my eyes tend wonder away from the leaves towards the avenue of trees but i cant see down there because of the angle on the shot. On a positive note i love the bright autumnal colours in the shot.

[Markulous]

It's the proportions I'm not too keen on - too much ininterrupted leaves (OK, there are the shadows but they're not strong enough, IMHO). There's something soft looking about those leaves - don't know what as the focus is fine (maybe some processing induced effect)



Pretty much just a crop!
I'll win you around to letterbox format, where appropriate!

[Rob Barron]

The crop has made a difference as has the colour cast being taken off as the trees form a more natural line taking my eye in and through the picture. The open space in the FG rather hinders that. However, i love the colours you've captured Charlotte, really strong image. it just either needed a focal point to stop the eyes wandering all over the place or the line to lead the eye which has been helped with the crop and the colourcast removal.

Cheers,
Rob

[Charlotte]

Stu, I know what you mean about the mass of leaves, and I did wonder if the trees were sitting too near the top edge of the frame. Colour was the intended main subject of the image, i.e. to capture the autumn colours of the leaves on the ground. Obviously that's not enough here and, as you say, I needed a single point of focus; in the FG I think. You should be able to see down to the end of the avenue, as the angle is straight-on down the path thru' the trees. I think the soft focus effect has affected the perspective from the point where the trees appear close together, so that you can't see clearly what is at the far end. Perhaps I need to do some sharpening from the point where the trees start.

Mark, the softness in the leaves is actually a completely natural diffuse glow which is apparent in the original longest-exposure shot (to capture the shadows) (this is a bracketed set of 3 shots, hdr'd ) resulting from the side-lighting reflecting off the leaves. The tone-mapped jpg retained this diffuse glow, and I thought it looked quite atmospheric, so I didn't do much sharpening, so as to retain the soft glow in the final image, as I quite like the effect. LOL I agree your choice of letterbox crop does work here + gives a more balanced composition

Rob, yes I agree with what you say as well, except about colour casts ... My original has a warm cast, which is how I saw it - it was shot fairly early in the morning - and I was quite happy with the WB ; whereas Mark's pimp has taken on a strong magenta + bluer cast. Or is it time to calibrate my screen

Mark, you've also done some sharpening I think, which has dispersed the soft glow + given the image a hardness which isn't really what I was after here. But that's what it's all about, seeing others' interpretations However, looking again + comparing the two, maybe I should find a happy medium regarding sharpening, i.e. do a bit more but not as much as you did.

Thanks all for your input, helpful as always

Further opinions on this are still welcome

[Markulous]

Originally Posted by Charlotte

whereas Mark's pimp has taken on a strong magenta + bluer cast. Or is it time to calibrate my screen

Mark, you've also done some sharpening I think, which has dispersed the soft glow + given the image a hardness which isn't really what I was after here. But that's what it's all about, seeing others' interpretations However, looking again + comparing the two, maybe I should find a happy medium regarding sharpening, i.e. do a bit more but not as much as you did.

Yeah, for some reason my mod has magenta/blue in the shadows and even I'm not keen on the contrasty rather *****ly result I've brought out! However, like my crop and am still disturbed by your 'soft look' in the leaves!

[Rob Barron]

I don't doubt the original had a correct colour Charlotte, what I meant was that the colourcast that is there, be that natural or not, doesn't allow the tree trunks to draw the eye forward in the way they do in the pimped version. Sometimes colourcasts are entirely natural but that doesn't always mean they can't be improved

Hope that has explained what I meant better than I did last time. I didn't mean that you had a bad colourcast problem in the original, far from it.

Cheers,
Rob