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QwikDrah — Procession
by-nc-nd
Published: 2011-03-02 23:52:08 +0000 UTC; Views: 161; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 3
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Description
Someone once put a lot of thought into the placement of these trees, now standing alone in a foggy field.I took some people's advice and lightened this one up a bit.
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Comments: 14
I like this shot a lot. It's got a nice depth, and not quite a creepy vibe, but a dark mood all the same. There's something that works about the thick dark tree on the left balanced by the thing dark tree on the other side. Yet...I think this might work as a square image, with some of that thick tree cropped out.
Have you tried brightening the gray at all? That might help with the image without darkening the trees more than they already are.
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Gray brightened.
Oh, and I took your cropping advice to heart as well. [link]
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Ooh, I like it. I think I prefer the square, but both look good.
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I kind of hoped that you'd revisit the "Maple Grove". I like it.
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My guess is I'll be back again, especially if there's a colorful Fall this year.
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I think if you wanted to make this creepy, you could easily do so by making the trees darker... What might be missing from your fog series is the full range of black to white. Like, sure, the trees in the distance are grey and obscured, but the ones up close could be darker.
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First of all, thank you so very much for your feedback. I've been unsure with my recent shoots and input like yours helps me find what I'm really wanting out of my work, as well as how to get there.
I did experiment with darker trees, and surprisingly, they are fairly dark now. I think the issue may be caused by the "white" of the image being gray, which lowers the contrast and makes the trees look less bold.
If I do darken the trees more, the closest on the left will appear to be near solid black because there is very little contrast in the bark. This in mind, do you still prefer them to be darker? If so I'll go back and try another edit.
And I should also mention that contrast is a big problem for me with these shots. In most, where there are some vague silhouettes in the background, brightening the lightest areas (which are the background) to near-white causes those wonderful shapes to be lost, especially since it seems the human eye has more trouble differentiating lighter values from mid-range grays.
That, and the higher-contrast (full value range) images lose that fuzzy ethereal quality in my opinion. So with every image I tried to set the value range to black-white, it always seemed too loud and sharp, let alone the lost details. Perhaps I should go back and post some scraps to demonstrate?
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What you say is true, when you try to gain more contrast you lose more detail. I have been thinking about this for a while, and wonder if maybe you were interested in trying an HDR shot? I haven't seen it much in B&W, but it could work really well for you in this case, and many of your other shots that you feel like are "missing" something.
My other question for you is how you are arriving at B&W. Are you shooting your camera with a B&W filter on, or changing it to B&W in post? From personal experience and as directed in a class, I learned that the best way is to shoot everything in color, and then convert to B&W. There are a lot of fine details that can be missed when you let the camera decide what pixels to save.
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I ended up tweaking the contrast a bit more, and I think the increased brightness more than makes up for the loss of subtle details in the background. As far as HDRs, I was often wimping out when deciding whether or not to grab a tripod after numerous times of never using it. I'm getting better now, and have even been taking multiple exposures which will facilitate HDRs should the need arise.
I use the B/W conversion adjustment in Photoshop. I even use it as a separate layer so I can use masks on multiple B/W layers to optimize the tones. I used to simply convert one or more RGB channels before I learned of the awesome tool in CS3 and newer versions.
Thanks for all the thoughts and suggestions. I was really needing the feedback with this particular batch of images.
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I'm happy to help! Whenever I'm actually on DA, I like to support the artists I follow
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I've passed through the Smokeys before, but didn't linger long enough to get a feel for them. The comparison seems like a good thing none-the-less.
I'd like to get some good hiking in around the Appalachian mountains one of these days.
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Oh yea definitely. I enjoy hiking myself. Just gotta be careful not to drop my camera.. which seems to happen to me while I'm moving about on a mountain. Nice work
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Luckily, even with all my tromping around, I've only dropped my SLR once. It happened as I was pulling my gear out of the trunk of a guy's car. I didn't know I had forgotten to zip my camera bag.
Unluckily, it hasn't focused right since. :\
But I manage.
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