I sort of like this week’s challenge because it has been a personal challenge for me as well. There is an ambience within a forest that seems to be hard to convey. There is also the difficulty to get a composition when lines are going every which way. This is an image I posted before in landscape but was not happy with. I shifted the white balance towards the blue spectrum and raised the exposure. Initially I wanted to emphasize the darkness of the forest but was just losing too much information.
This was shot in Oregon with a D810 and 24-70 lens. The idea for this composition came during a rain soaked trip on Kodiak Island. I have never since found this scene quite to match that experience. Eliot Porter has an image on this same subject shot in Maine which may have sent me down this road originally.
Igor, there’s a good mix of vertical (tree trunks fading into the distance) and horizontal (amazing collection of bare branches) that shows the challenge of walking off trail here. The two tones of green on the forest floor look good and the bit of sunlit green at the tops enhances the sense of depth well.
Beautiful image, Igor. I would clone out the bright leaf and vertical stick bottom edge toward the right, but minor stuff. An easily overlooked scene done beautifully.
Lovely. The delicate lines of the small branches give this a sense of spaciousness and the dark trees receding into the background give a nice sense of depth. That really bright green patch in the LLC does draw my eye a bit; I might have desaturated it, but YMMV. I like the two vertical, downward pointing branches near the right hand edge. Adds a bit of different character to the tree.
I agree with you Bonnie. The light was coming from that direction. I’m not sure I have the skills to burn that in a gradated manner so that the light intensity appears evenly.
@Igor_Doncov, I don’t know as I’d burn it, but rather desaturate it. I tried it to see what that looked like. I just added a Hue/Sat layer (in PS), desaturated only the yellows, then painted the effect in only in those really bright green areas. I didn’t take it too far or change the hue, which also would be possible.
This is wonderful, Igor. I like the sense of depth to the scene as the trees fade into the BG and the varying shades of green are lovely. The horizontal format works beautifully and does a very nice job of emphasizing the bare horizontal limbs. I have a couple of small suggestions. No 1: crop off the tree along the right edge and No 2: clone out the bright leaf toward the LRC. Here is a rework with my thoughts.
This is fantastic. I really like the light and the greens but what I really like is how the lighter lines of of the trees branches radiate out so nicely from the trunk. Beautiful work!
Excellent collection of vertical and diagonal lines created by the trees in contrast with the greens on the forest floor. Interesting to see how many different versions our viewers have made here. I still like the original the best. And I agree that this challenge is quite difficult. Some places in the forest are so busy and it’s hard to develop a point of view.
I think pretty much bandwagon comments here - which means I’m not adding much, other than to say that this is wonderful.
The outstretched, delicate branches really ties the entire comp together.
I think Ed’s edits are right on, incorporating many other suggestions as well like Bonnie’s desat of the LLC. RE: the vertical hanging branch on the right? The saving factor is that it’s attached and natural; if it was broken and dangling I might feel differently.
Igor, you have captured a striking image of the most unlovely stage in the life of a Douglas-fir tree farm (to a forester’s eye). The overhead canopy has been closed over for 5 years and the lower branches, starved for sunlight, have not yet had enough fungal action to drop off. In a few years this will be a stand of vertical vibrant young timber. But you captured the horizontal beauty of the ugly duckling. Well seen!
Of course, I fiddled with it …
The LL is quite yellow, and yellow demands attention, so I cropped, de-saturated and hue-shifted some of that. Too much?
To my eye, a high portion of the image is full of gray branches, which I wanted to move to the background so as to focus on the horizontal branches of the front trees.
I flipped it so that the bright background leaves took the eyes up and to the right … just a personal preference.
The result might be well short of what inspired you and Eliot Porter, I realize.
With the strong horizontal lines, I tried B&W but could not deal with the haze of small branches .
Thank you for the rework. The base was kind of important to me in that I wanted an image of the branches and the needle laden floor. The plantless floor is one of the endearing characteristics of a pine forest so I tried to use it in the composition. The scene also appears overly dark to me but I’m not sure if I’m imagining it now. Thank you for putting in the effort.
