OK, I have never appreciated still life art, so maybe this proves it. But I was enthralled by this combination of sticks stones, roots, and lichen.
Any at all
Is this a jumble going helter skelter, or does the eye find lots of places to explore? Both?
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
I love this type of image, Dick. Certainly not too jumbled for my taste. I love the shadows and nooks, the textures of the wood and stone, and the colors. Finding a suitable composition would be tough here, and I think you did an excellent job there. It all works together beautifully to me. I did a very slight rework. I cropped a little off the left side to remove the blank spot in the ULC, and also cropped just a tiny bit of the bottom and right side just to retain the proper balance. I also desaturated the yellows and greens about 20% because they look pretty over saturated on my monitor. I would really like to know others opinion of the saturation to see if my monitor is not showing correctly.
This is a lovely scene. A well-seen still life. It has a lot of energy for a still life, with all those angles. The round rock with the cool veining makes a nice counterpoint to the wood. The only thing that detracts is the super-saturated yellows and greens. They are positively lurid on my screen and don’t look at all natural. Not that we have to have natural colors all the time, but this seems like you’re trying to show “reality”, and so those colors are odd.
Yup. I saw that discussion in another post, about not having the sRGB profile embedded and wondered if that was the issue here. The lichen/moss is still electric green, but that is how it looks at the shore.
The color looks quite alright on my screen, I am not sure if Chrome automatically parse the image as sRGB. I like Bill’s crop from the left but I am still thinking about the triangle in the lower left corner. It seems like cropping it out will take away from the texture above. Perhaps cloning it out?
Nicely captured, Dick. Isn’t it amazing what weather/nature does to shape natural materials like wood and rock!
I like the crop that nibbled the left side. Thanks.
Nice rework, Dick. The darker shadows really added something for me. At first look I wasn’t too sure but I now think the weathered forms, swirling smooth textures and colors are strong enough to carry enough of the image. I would crop out the gray highlight resting in the deep shadow mid picture. It is a bit distracting. I get the impression that this wood form is flying out of that cave.
Hhmmmm, you suggested to crop (I think you meant clone) the center cave out, and then you said “flying out of the cave”. Tomorrow I will see if I can bring some detail out of the darkness surrounding the bright cave to imply some force coming out of that slit to make the scene. … I have more time than original thoughts so I try to will build on yours.
Yes, looks much more natural in sRGB.
Well this was a pretty interesting find, thanks for sharing it with us. It is amazing that the rock could even get in behind the “crutch” branch like this. But if water can create slot canyons, it can easily do something like this.
While there is a lot going on here, the image has so many interesting elements that I have no trouble engaging with the image. So for me the controlled chaos works very well, this was a nice bit of seeing on your part. In terms of the “cave” here is a cropping possibility for lessening it’s impact, although it comes at the price of losing some of the diagonal trunk in the ULC. I’m not sure if the tradeoff is worth it or not.
