Outward Bound

Very artistic image. The composition is nice, but the light and textures make the image.

I really like this image Dean. The paths formed by the lines in the wood just keep my eye travelling back and forth.. I only have a small nit, and that is the vignetting in the lrc muddies up the tree a bit.. I am not sure how to clean that up while keeping the vignette (cause I think it works great for this image).

Gorgeous light and tones in this Dean.

I love this! Great abstract with beautiful textures, colors and lines. Well seen and captured

Wonderful textures and lines. To bad about the scan. Did you do it yourself? If so I would scan it twice at different levels and stack the scans to retain detail in the highlights. HERE is a short tutorial I did on this years ago. I did it to bring out detail in the shadows, but just do it in reverse, instead of increasing the analog gain to get into the shadows, reduce it to retain detail in the highlights. Good luck.

Love these types of shots. Really digging this one.

Awesome! I really dig these types of images and you nailed this one.

Thanks Youssef. I'll take a look at your tutorial. I just have an old Epson that I scanned this with. It does okay but not near as good as a professional drum scan which I hope to do some day.

Thanks all for the comments.

nice details in this shot

Hamed

Very cool, Dean, love the textures and colors in this!

Real nice light and color here. It's a nice one!

Chris

This is exquisite, Dean. The lines and textures, your incredible composition, and that lovely warm glow, really make this a joy to view. Botanical sandstone in some ways. Stunning.
I have found Tony Kuyper's "Triple Play" to be quite useful in handling highlights at times. Certainly know what you are saying about scanners. Flatbed scanners have such limitations in my limited experience, so using every tool possible to get the most out of my scans is a constant and at times frustrating endeavor for me.

I think this wood detail has a wonderful quality too it and the scan looks just fine to me.

Fine abstract. You've really made the light here special. I particularly like the blues intermixed with the warm colors.

Very nice image Dean. You really found the beauty in this tree trunk. Nice comp, light and colors.

I really love the composition, textures, colors, and subject here, Dean. My only nit is with the highlights - as you said, the scan blew them out, in the center-left of the image.

A bigger issue for me is in the lower-right - the highlights look like they were blown and then pulled down, thus making them look pretty flat. If this was due to a vignette you added in post, I have a suggestion - using Tony Kuyper's luminosity masks, you can make a curves/levels layer for your vignette, with just the outer circle as the mask - and then subtract the "light lights" or "bright lights" from that mask, so the vignette doesn't pull down the highlights and make them look flat. This works similarly to "highlight priority" vignetting in Adobe Camera Raw.