icebox falls

wasn't looking for this...but it was a nice surprise!

that's a lot of moss.

Nice image Drew. The moss has a glow about it, due to some nice soft light. Perhaps this is a result of Topaz, but I've enjoyed very similar scenes in the woods with my own eyes.

thanks guys, yes the light was nice and soft due to overcast. it seems like now my posts are tainted with the "topaz" topic, so i'll touch on that. there is a lot of powerful softwares available for photo manipulation. i think it is important to learn to use these tools. i think ignoring them, in my mind, limits our opportunities for creativity. we can extrapolate all the way down to photoshop, which on its own can do what any of these softwares can do if you know how to manipulate it. how about raw converters? or lightroom? can you imagine not learning how to use these softwares? it's funny how some software or photo manipulation is "okay" and others are "taboo". of course many prefer a "natural" look for landscape photography, myself included. i dont personally enjoy looking at photos that appear obviously overcooked - especially if it is the result of someone just pressing a process button and accepting what comes out the other side. these are easy to spot in todays world and much of the general public is still somewhat interested in seeing these cartoons. probably more so than seeing images that are SOOC. fact is i am certain most of the images that we see and really think "wow" have had some manipulation at some level introduced, wether it be dodging, burning, contrast, RAW exposure compensation, sharpenning, etc, etc, etc. the guys that do this well produce amazing images. and to do it well, first you must learn how to use the tools. and this probably doesnt always come out so great when on the learning curve. i am learning how to use the tools available to my craft, so excuse my foibles along the way!

No photograph ever taken by anyone since the beginning of time is 100% pure. Every single one has been manipulated/altered to one degree or another. It is just that some folks happen to become known by the type of manipulation that they do - some folks always apply the Orton effect to most all of their images and that has become their style. Topaz is another one that is pretty easy to spot and has a certain look to it. Nothing wrong with that, but it becomes easy to tag, and once you get tagged several times then you are IT, ha!

By the way there is nothing wrong with "only" using ACR/Photoshop to process either...

no i wasnt implying there was anything wrong with only using acr/photoshop. i said "in my mind" it is important for me to learn to use the tools available. it is how i feel i can get the most out of my experience.

at any rate, my images today look much different than my images of 3-4 years ago, and i assume in 3-4 years they will again look different :)

This is a well captured intimate landscape Drew. Nicely seen and processed.

We all want to be recognized as artists and as such should have any and all tools available at our disposal to craft our artistic vision. The amount of optimization we do to our images with those tools should be left to our own individual tastes.

If we are selling our work then the buying public gets to decide what is acceptible or not.

Nice shot, especially for this time of the year. All these tools we now have access to can be good and bad. It's easy to push a "not so great" photo to the extreme and make it look good for a second, but I like it when you gradually like a photo more and more. Not less and less. I probably wouldn't even want to be a photographer without RAW. A lot of people I encounter at the camera store think JPG is the only way to go, but to me it's like working with a medium that's not very flexible or dynamic. After 2 1/2 years of working at a camera store, I've only seen maybe 50-100 good images there. Most amateur photographer never progress to the point of getting consistently sharp and noise free images. What's cool to me about most nature/landscape photographers is that they usually know that tripods, mirror lockup, remotes and RAW are vital to the start of a good photo.

I like the way the moss seems to be trickling down (with the roots (?) hanging down to the left of the waterfall). I also like the gold color on the rocks. Good eye to see this.

Nice image Drew, your post processing helps make this image very pleasing to look at. Great job!

thanks all for feedbacks and discussions :)

I really like this shot Drew. I especially enjoy seeing photos of scenes that I would probably have missed and this is one. Thanks for sharing!