Red

Here are a couple of abstract images taken of some nearby trees while standing at my front door in Loveland, CO. They were taken two weekends ago during an awesome sunset. The compression is definitely not doing them any favors (even "Save for Web" had to be set at 50% to get under the file limit ) but I thought it would be fun to share them anyway.

Abstract trees in red sunset #2.

And just when you thought you had seen them all...
...here's another eclipse image taken at 1:45 a.m. early this morning at home in Loveland. Luckily, the clouds lifted just in time to get a few shots off during the middle of the eclipse!

Hey Josh,
I really like #2. Seems more orderly and less chaotic than #1. Color's nicer, too.
Glad you all were able to witness and capture this event. Looks like our little corner of the staer was the only area to get skunked!

BTW, did you know that we can post images up to 300kb now? They started that a couple of months ago.

Thanks John. Somehow the new file limit escaped my attention. That would have been nice on this post.
Don't feel too bad about the clouds, I think a lot of areas in the mountains also got skunked. My original plan to photograph a location in the Estes area wouldn't have worked out so I just kind of made do with this shot.

I too like the second one. And I can't get enough eclipse shots, seeing as it'll be 2014 before we see more.

My tiny brain says that the tree shots need an anchor, some base to ground them. More of the trunks or a minimal horizon. Processing looks great though. I think you did well on exp and pp on the moon, but I'd fill the frame more on your crop.

I agree with John. The rythmic pattern of the trees in #2 is very nice.

Are the white borders around the trees due to compression, or oversharpening?

You did Loveland proud on that eclipse shot. Glad to see that one Lovelander stayed up

As Bill alludes too, the secret to avoid the artifacts is to reduce sharpening. Even at 300Kb, oversharpening will wreck havoc with this. In this case, a softer image is better than an artifacty one But theyre beautiful comps, shold make nice prints!

Thanks all. Unfortunately there was a house under these trees so getting more of the trunks was not an option. I had intended to concentrate more on the branches accordingly. These probably were indeed oversharpened in attempt to maintain a little clarity after the compression so both reasons are probably actually to blame for the borders Bill A vicious circle when posting these types of images to the Web it is .

#2 gets my vote too for the reasons John mentioned. Nice work.

#2 gets my vote as well--late but a vote non the less!

cool abstracts Josh...I like 2 the best

All 3 are really pure art, Joshua!

Great series, the abstracts are sublime!