Miniature Forest

Image Critiques Abstract Nature Critiques
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Miniature Forest
Miniature Forest2048×1365 624 KB

This is a small stand of birch trees that I ride by sometimes, I finally stopped to do some ICM on them.

Specific Feedback Requested is the background sky too bright? I tried bringing down the brightness on it a bit.

Anything else

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400, 70mm, 1/20, f/5, ISO 100
I did a slight adjustment with the greens and brought down the bright BG a bit.

apani.hill
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I’m a big fan of ICM. It’s a technique that can be tried on just about anything with surprising results every time.

ICM, as you know, is very subjective. For me, I don’t think you have enough movement leaving the trees looking just a little blurred rather than intentionally blurred. Lighter areas will generally always be brighter than usual because of the length of time the shutter is left open. I don’t really have any other suggestions to bring down that brightness .

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OK, thanks for the response @glennie good to know. I’ve entered some where I’ve gone too far and this one I guess hasn’t gone far enough! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Hey @Vanessa_Hill I can feel your pain on this one! I have tried a few ICM and some really work and others just seem to miss for some reason. A couple things I like to think about with ICM.

  1. It has to LOOK intentional. If it just looks like my grandpa with the shakes took the picture then peoples initial thought is, “thats just an out of focus image.”
  2. ICM seems, to my untrained eye, to work really well when emphasizing patterns and shapes. If things end up running together the brain struggles to make sense of what you are looking at.
  3. The more abstract they become, the more you can push them in terms of processing which can be a lot of fun!

Not much you can do for the highlights here, I would suggest looking into what is called ETTR or Expose to the Right techniques as that will help ensure you don’t lose that detail.

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