Just a tree

[OldSchool]

Hi all,
Been on the road a bunch this summer. I'm finally getting my arms around the PP work. This is my first submission from a trip up to the Canadian Rockies. This little tree caught my eye. Does the image do any thing for you?

All comments and suggestions are appreciated.
TIA,
Tim

[readingr]

Tim,

It may be my monitor setup but there seems a lot of pixalation in the bright part of the tree, does it look better before reducing to 640?

As for the composition I like it. The colour of the water and the reflections hint at other things on a hillside or a bank of a river with the clouds reflecting above them,

The starkness of the tree looking and reaching to the water makes it look as if there is a big drop to the water and its as if the tree is reaching out for a drink.

Well spotted.

Roger

[OldSchool]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for the review. The original is from a D70, and it's full frame. It looks very clean in comparison. That pixilation is a result of downsizing, resulting sharpening, and the JPG compression to keep the file size small for posting here.

But, that brings up one of digitals detractors for me. I find that even my D70, with in camera sharpening off, has problems with very subtile changes in hue (like a rich sky ... or blue/green water). With 12 bit depth colors, I just don't think digital is as smooth as film for this stuff. Thus, I must be very careful when working with very slight gradients -- especially in post processing.

Cheers,
Tim

[Nina]

I almost feel cheated because it is apparent that not all of the tree is in the image. I would've preferred alot less water & more focus on the tree with a closer perspective but being where you were, I'm not sure it would've been so easy to accomplish that.

[Seb]

Hi Roger,

Thanks for the review. The original is from a D70, and it's full frame. It looks very clean in comparison. That pixilation is a result of downsizing, resulting sharpening, and the JPG compression to keep the file size small for posting here.

But, that brings up one of digitals detractors for me. I find that even my D70, with in camera sharpening off, has problems with very subtile changes in hue (like a rich sky ... or blue/green water). With 12 bit depth colors, I just don't think digital is as smooth as film for this stuff. Thus, I must be very careful when working with very slight gradients -- especially in post processing.

Cheers,
Tim

Hello Tim, owning a D70 myself I am not sure that I would fully agree with your comment. I must admit that I don't have such a huge experience with film but I find that I get excellent results while shooting raw. I can see your point if shooting jpeg fines, this is where compression hurts by taking away fine details.

As for your picture, I enjoy it but I felt like messing a little with it.

regards

Seb

[gahspidy]

Tim, I'm liking the subject alot as it looks like a tree that was dealt a gale force wind and never got over it. Good placement of the tree, and Sebs crop is an improvement I feel. I just do not find the color of the water working well behind the green tree. I think this would look very dramatic as a b& w image. but then the water may not look much like water . . . See what you think.
Good work

[OldSchool]

Hi all,

Thanks all for the comments....

Nina, that's the whole tree. It is, however high altitude and windswept. I did take a portrait version of this shot that showed more fg and a shoreline in the bg, but went with the landscape because I was trying to bring focus to the subtleties of the negative space.

Seb, I like your crop. As far as my D70 (digital) comments go... I did shoot this RAW. And, I note that the 12 bit a/d converters for the RGB channels show distinct "choices" when working with very similar colors -- even in RAW. Zoom in on a sky that is slightly changing hue, and you'll see what I mean. Note, this is an issue whenever anything is digitized -- scanned film images included. We all lose a lot of info when downsizing for the web.

Gary, as far as the water color goes. I feel I pushed the saturation way too much on this shot. After looking at the print, I don't like the colors at all. I got too "artsy" in PP. I should have left the colors alone.

Again, thanks everybody,
Tim