Wading Trees

This is a lake/reservoir close to my family's condo. The photo shows a beautiful natural landscape of water, trees and mountains. Just behind me a few yards back are housing developments as far as the eye can see. I enjoy this lake on the edge of humanity as a quick escape to nature and the endless photographic opportunities it presents. I probably need to burn and selectively sharpen some of the over-bright trees in the foreground. Let me know what you all think. Thanks.

Cannon 50D, normal lens, 2 stop hard GND, ISO 100, f16 at 1 sec., setting sun.


- DMP

Hi David

What a great scene with lots of potential right in your backyard! The trees must be a lot of fun to experiment with in different conditions. The only thing for me is I would darken the reflection a bit.

David this is a really good representational photo, I think you captured what you saw quite well, I might agree with your self assessment on the trees, but I have an idea that as a critique might seem odd, but it's kinda like looking at two pictures placed together, I don't know how, you won't get the same conditons if you reshoot, but for some reason my brain sees two images placed next to each other in the same one. A vertical comp on the bigger trees on the left and a horizontal comp on the father trees on the right. On a crop that would make the two photos if your software has it, in Image resize you can blow up the crop and it will divide the divide the pixels so you don't lose pixel density. I hope I'm making sense here.



Paul

Thanks Mike and Paul. I will be burning some of the hot areas and to answer Paul's suggestions - I do understand what you are saying, but I am only using Aperture as my pp software, so I can't perform your suggestion as of yet. However, I just purchased Photo Shop and I am in the process of learning, so my "internal human" software still can't do it. I did wish to have those far away trees a little closer than what I captured.

What I would really like to do is get closer to the trees with a zoom lens, which I do not own. I am only working with a wide angle and normal lens. I try to shoot with the hopes of getting most of what I want before pp. I am learning and hopefully with time my pp will get better.

Thanks for the comments.

- DMP

I have elemenst which is based on Photoshop CS so you should be able to do it once you learn your way around it. I bought Elements cause it was like 99 bucks versus 300 to 600 depending on how pru you wanted to go. Elements works in the same way as CS so I thought it would be a good way to learn as well,

Fascinating landscape David, the trees really stand out. The foreground reeds/rushes, however, are distracting for me. Perhaps you would have had to wade, like the trees, to get around that?

I've thought about it - wading in the waters. Maybe next time (I'll have to brave the mud and bring some old sneakers), because my goal is to really bring out the line of trees. Thanks.

- DMP