Reach for the sky

[SmartWombat]

Probably overexposed this to get the sky colour.
Didn't have the circ pol filter with me, but there's always next year's Goodwood Festival of Speed to try again.

I'm not sure if the dark blob to the left is on by monitor, or whether it's bug-poop from the hordes of little beetles that were flocking around that day. I think its in the image and could be cloned out with PS.
#

[Lava Lamp]

Probably overexposed this to get the sky colour.
Didn't have the circ pol filter with me, but there's always next year's Goodwood Festival of Speed to try again.

I'm not sure if the dark blob to the left is on by monitor, or whether it's bug-poop from the hordes of little beetles that were flocking around that day. I think its in the image and could be cloned out with PS.
#

I really struggle with shots of trees. To me, your photos are a good example of what happens -- you see a good interesting tree, but your photographs fail to capture what makes it worth looking at. If fails the "Would I hang it on my wall?" test. I think the thing to do is to highlight the texture or really find an unusual viewpoint. Maybe B&W would help. I'm not sure - like I said, I'm bad at trees.

[adina]

are you shooting digital? I just read something about shooting two images and combining them so that you have the detail in the trees (in your case) and the color you want in the sky. Probably the same effect as your filter.....

adina

[gmen]

The dark blob might well be dust on the imaging sensor. What aperture was the first shot taken at? I'm guessing a very small one - that's when those little blobbies start to show up. Might be worth taking some test shots of a plain subject (a wall perhaps) at increasingly smaller apertures to see if the blob shows up again... Dust seems to get everywhere these days!

[SmartWombat]

The dark blob might well be dust on the imaging sensor.

Actually it's beetle poo on the front of the lens
They were all over me because I was wearing yellow, and they walked all over the camera.
I reckon at one point I had nearly 100 on my shirt that I could see .

[gmen]

Crikey... that's an awful lot of poo!