Being stuck at home is a great opportunity to try out new things. For me this meant going to a local woodland and shooting some forest scenes. I really struggle to find compositions in all that chaos but in this case the wild garlic blossom helps to simplify the scene I think.
Back in editing room I was keen to try out some new editing techniques I picked up online. I created multiple smart objects in Photoshop to edit foreground and background separately. Afterwards I carefully blended the two edits together using dodging & burning and luminosity masks.
Technical details:
Sony a7iii, Tamron 28-75 @ 75mm, 1/15sec, f/16.0, iso 100, CPL, tripod
RAW file → Finished edit
Any feedback regarding composition & post processing is welcome!
1 Like
hi @martinmaier_photography
I really like what you have done on the PP, the light on those leafs glows compared to the Raw, also the colours are gorgeous.
Its not easy to find compositions on coaTic scenes, but i like what you have done. Those trees are well positioned ont the center and third of the image keeping it balanced.
The only thing i would try to do different would be try to dodge the this left tree a bit more to brighten it a bit and make it grab more eye attention.
You have a lovelly local woodland area by the way.
Thanks for sharing,
Cheers
1 Like
Martin, you did a great job blending these for dynamic range. Dappled woodland light like this creates a lot of contrast and can be difficult to process, but you have come away with detail, and kept it very natural looking. I think the foreground flowers came out especially well.
My only nitpick here is the main tree of the left merges with two trees in the background, both on the left and right, and I find these mergers slightly distracting. The fact that both of these backgrounds trees are bright alos makes the merger more distracting. Sometimes you can “hide” background trees, but here I might have tried stepping to the right, changing the composition in an attempt to have the main tree not have any mergers.
1 Like
Thank you very much @João_Ferrão and @Ed_McGuirk for your comments. I really appreciate the feedback regarding the post processing because I am still a novice when it comes to blending and dodging & burning. If I worked this scene a bit more on location I might have been able to improve the composition as well. Good thing is it is not far away from home 
1 Like
