Twig

[kikashi]

Improvable?

[attachment=14856:twig.jpg]

Jeremy

[shutterpup]

Jeremy,
What I like is all the textures of the fallen branch and whatever that is under it. That said, at first glance, all I get is an overall impression of white which I don't care for. I had to come back several times to really notice the textures involved. I wish I could make a suggestion on how to improve it, but that fallen branch just looks blown out. Someone else here will have a better suggestion than I could come up with.

[dalethorn]

Jeremy,
What I like is all the textures of the fallen branch and whatever that is under it. That said, at first glance, all I get is an overall impression of white which I don't care for. I had to come back several times to really notice the textures involved. I wish I could make a suggestion on how to improve it, but that fallen branch just looks blown out. Someone else here will have a better suggestion than I could come up with.

I second all of this, but if you do manage to fix up some of those white areas, you still have the odd juxtaposition of that dark tree to the left of the other items, which doesn't seem to fit.  I did a rather strange thing with the attached, compressing the vertical and a slight crop, just to give it what I thought would be a better fit.

[shutterpup]

Jeremy,
I took a look at the histogram; in my program, it looks almost flat. I tried changing the contrast; nothing really looked good and nothing that I did really did anything for that white log.

[dalethorn]

I took off some of the highlight on the log here, which shows a little more texture now.  It's hard to do without affecting the rest of the image.

[shutterpup]

I took off some of the highlight on the log here, which shows a little more texture now.  It's hard to do without affecting the rest of the image.

Dale,
The problem here is that the histogram does not bear out my idea that the highlights are blown. If they were, they would have been shoved up against the right side, which they were not. So, I'm not sure what remedy would serve that white branch best.

[dalethorn]

Dale,
The problem here is that the histogram does not bear out my idea that the highlights are blown. If they were, they would have been shoved up against the right side, which they were not. So, I'm not sure what remedy would serve that white branch best.

I'm sure you're right - the fix I did was very crude.  It would be interesting to know more about this area of the photo.

[kikashi]

Jeremy,
I took a look at the histogram; in my program, it looks almost flat. I tried changing the contrast; nothing really looked good and nothing that I did really did anything for that white log.

I've made some alterations to the image, toning down the log to bring out some more detail (all done in Lightroom).

[attachment=14874:twig2.jpg]

Incidentally, I suspect you have some misunderstandings as regards histograms. A flat histogram merely indicates that over the whole of the image, there's an even distribution of tones. It has nothing whatever to do with contrast. If you take a shot of a mid-gray card, you'll see a histogram with a single peak in the midtones and nothing (much) elsewhere, but it will still be a flat image, lacking in any contrast. The reverse is true as well.

Jeremy

[shutterpup]

I've made some alterations to the image, toning down the log to bring out some more detail (all done in Lightroom).

[attachment=14874:twig2.jpg]

Incidentally, I suspect you have some misunderstandings as regards histograms. A flat histogram merely indicates that over the whole of the image, there's an even distribution of tones. It has nothing whatever to do with contrast. If you take a shot of a mid-gray card, you'll see a histogram with a single peak in the midtones and nothing (much) elsewhere, but it will still be a flat image, lacking in any contrast. The reverse is true as well.

Jeremy

I like this much better.

My point about the histogram was that I had thought originally that the highlights were blown; the histogram, when I checked it out, did not bear that out.