Rebirth

Out on hood canal last night before work and had just a nice sun going behind the olympics, feature less sky, and no color after it all went down except up north where a few clouds were. Found this log with some leading lines and the plant growing out of it so thought the title may be appropriate. Your comments and critiques are welcome. Some flare reduction with ps2. Canon 5d, 16-35, 3 stop nd, 4 stop soft gnd.

I might try cropping to put the sun at the top edge leaving the log to fill the lower 2/3 of the frame. The sky at the top of the image doesn't do much for the image. I like the idea but it feels like two separate competing elements rather than a single cohesive subject. Nicely done technically.

The sky is too blown out which makes for a distraction. I can't tell where the photo ends and where the web page begins. If you had clouds and some color, it would really be nice.

I don't mind the blown sky in this case. With this strong backlight, it feels very natural to my eye. I do think for the sake of presentation here on NPN you should add some kind of border to the photo though. Like Erik said, its hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

From a story telling standpoint, the sun is a necessity in this shot. The old tree has had its time in the spotlight, and now the opportunistic young plant has moved in for its time to shine.

I see what you are saying about a border and Somebody told me once how to put a border around these, but i have forgotten how. :)

Eric Hahl wrote a tutorial on making frames in Photoshop. Just click on the tips link towards the top of the page.

There are lots of ways to make frames, both simple and fancy, but for just a plain black border try this with your photo open in Photoshop: Select All then Edit > Stroke. Try a 2-6 pixel centered black stroke to begin with.