Rhododendron against trunks in a grove of coastal redwoods, Del Norte Redwoods State Park, June 9, 2008 under a bright drizzly overcast afternoon sky. About a 3z3 inch crop from a Provia 100F 4x5 transparency. In order to keep the trunks vertical, in addition to using as much shift movement as my Wisner allows, I also had my Gitzo G-1325 plus G-1318 about as high as possible at about 70 inches above a large fallen 4 foot diameter redwood log it was precariously tripoded atop. And to see into the groundglass, I was standing atop a wobbly foldup tripod chair I lash to the back of my photo daypack:
The exposure was 15 seconds in dead still air in order to capture as much depth of field as possible and stopped down somewhere between f45 and f64. The hanging moss here was an unusual situation and the burned black trunk near center allowed better separation for those elements in front of it. Over several days we hoped for fog in this area but that didn't happen.
These deep redwood forests are some of the most challenging conditions I've ever worked in and I well realize this is one realm where digital shooters have a considerable advantage versus we with film. It was our first ever road trip to this distant northern area of our state and I was considerably impressed, so will certainly return in future seasons. My overall results were not as strong as I'd hoped because we had limited periods of fog that is usually necessary for exceptional images. In fact over 7 days I shot just 18 sheets and they were almost all in merely overcast conditions like the above I am not sure I will bother to market. The dim forest understory light often with subjects requiring considerable depth of field, meant long multi second exposures that requires periods of dead still air. And the brush is mostly over head height so one becomes resigned to just shoot from or near road and trail sides. Wandering crosscountry was simply frustrating and unproductive.
I don't know how much photoshop you're willingto do, but I have a couple of comments on the photo (I'm lookingwith my laptop so bear in mind screen calibration might be way off and comments irrelevant then):
- I find the flowers too bright to get their saturation attract my eye. They get a little lost in the high ferquency detail. I like the detail, but I figure color/hues could help the eye be grabbed by the front floral subject.
- There's a very strong green overcast, in particular on the trunks and sky. Is that intended?
- These forests tend to be very dark when you walk in, so you could experiment with underexposing also this shot, to bring some of that mood, forcing the eye to hunt a little for those details you captured. That might simplify the 1st look for the viewer, kinda like a japanese painting, but with patience the viewer would start to travel in the frame to discover the subtleties of the textures and intricacies of the intertwined shapes.
No need for fog here David. You did a real good job w/ the composition. I do wish the trunks were straighter though, not sure if that's reality or just the mind playing tricks on me. I don't mind the green color cast. It gives it a sort of retro look and stands out.
Dan you are correct in that there seems to be a cyan green cast on the redwood trunks. However that is actually mainly due to all the blue-green lichen densely covering the outer bark of all redwoods in this rain forest. In fact some trees also have heavy coverings of moss at their base. Additionally understory light filtering through needles of the trees and reflected off the needles tends to enhance green shades a bit.
Richard, yep the trunks do look tilted slightly to the right, thanks. Something I missed. On the slide the narrow trunk against the burned trunk is dead vertical while this pic is tilted a bit right. No doubt due to the sloppy scanner position I used on my holder. I could fix it with an Edit...Transform...Skew adjustment but won't bother. We've decided none of the rhodendodron redwood shots either of us took on this trip will be drum scanned, processed, printed, and marketed because they just aren't as exceptional as some of the best work I've seen by others. I'm just really picky about that. We learned quite a lot and will be back again another year. The one image on this trip I might use is the wet fern image recently posted on ES&S.
Yeah I had similar sort of weather, no clouds at all just a little weak marine layer at dusk so I didn't spend much time shooting the forests. I have a photographer friend up at Crescent City right now and she says the fog is thick as pea soup. Some incredible shots to show for it too.
This is nicely composed, David. I agree that cutting back the cyan, even though it there naturally, would allow the flowers to pop more. I think the flowers are central and would make a more expressive image if they are brought up some. I think a film such as Astia or a color neg film would be better suited to an image such as this. Still, this is quite nice.
Discussion
6 replieshttp://www.davidsenesac.com/Del_Norte__6-08/tripod_log.jpg
The exposure was 15 seconds in dead still air in order to capture as much depth of field as possible and stopped down somewhere between f45 and f64. The hanging moss here was an unusual situation and the burned black trunk near center allowed better separation for those elements in front of it. Over several days we hoped for fog in this area but that didn't happen.
These deep redwood forests are some of the most challenging conditions I've ever worked in and I well realize this is one realm where digital shooters have a considerable advantage versus we with film. It was our first ever road trip to this distant northern area of our state and I was considerably impressed, so will certainly return in future seasons. My overall results were not as strong as I'd hoped because we had limited periods of fog that is usually necessary for exceptional images. In fact over 7 days I shot just 18 sheets and they were almost all in merely overcast conditions like the above I am not sure I will bother to market. The dim forest understory light often with subjects requiring considerable depth of field, meant long multi second exposures that requires periods of dead still air. And the brush is mostly over head height so one becomes resigned to just shoot from or near road and trail sides. Wandering crosscountry was simply frustrating and unproductive.
- I find the flowers too bright to get their saturation attract my eye. They get a little lost in the high ferquency detail. I like the detail, but I figure color/hues could help the eye be grabbed by the front floral subject.
- There's a very strong green overcast, in particular on the trunks and sky. Is that intended?
- These forests tend to be very dark when you walk in, so you could experiment with underexposing also this shot, to bring some of that mood, forcing the eye to hunt a little for those details you captured. That might simplify the 1st look for the viewer, kinda like a japanese painting, but with patience the viewer would start to travel in the frame to discover the subtleties of the textures and intricacies of the intertwined shapes.
Cheers.
Richard, yep the trunks do look tilted slightly to the right, thanks. Something I missed. On the slide the narrow trunk against the burned trunk is dead vertical while this pic is tilted a bit right. No doubt due to the sloppy scanner position I used on my holder. I could fix it with an Edit...Transform...Skew adjustment but won't bother. We've decided none of the rhodendodron redwood shots either of us took on this trip will be drum scanned, processed, printed, and marketed because they just aren't as exceptional as some of the best work I've seen by others. I'm just really picky about that. We learned quite a lot and will be back again another year. The one image on this trip I might use is the wet fern image recently posted on ES&S.
-PB