Cliche?

[David Eckels]

Perhaps a cliche, but does this work?

[Ed Blagden]

Not a cliche to me... but I can't get my eye to rest anywhere on this.

[francois]

Not a cliché and I like it a lot.

[Chris Calohan]

I was wondering if you changed the emphasis to the color swirling action and de-emphasized the rest a bit if it wouldn't draw the eye into a color pattern...I never know with such things, but while it is different, I'm not sure I went in the right direction...but then again, perhaps I did.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Too busy. Chris' edit is an improvement, though.

[David Eckels]

Chris, thanks. Decreased exposure, increased contrast?
Slobodan, but he blocked the black stones in the pool! I get the busy part.
Ed, I was thinking about the swirling being framed by the static elements, but not sure it works. I honed in on this part of the frame and will post the larger frame when I get home from work.
All, I do have different exposures; this was 4 sec and the rest go down to .5 sec. Thanks.
I have to think about this one. Fuzzy concept, fuzzy shot?

Finally home from work. This is a 2 sec exposure, but you can see the entire frame.

[slackercruster]

It is OK. I didn't like as a small. I looked and it looked better. Liked the freaky blur.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Actually, the entire frame makes more sense to me.

[David Eckels]

Actually, the entire frame makes more sense to me.

Not as disorienting?

[WalterEG]

David,

I am also one in favour of the entire scene.

To my mind the extract is not sufficiently devoid of substance to pull it off as an abstract.  Whereas, in the full image it is easier to accept the beauty of the movement when framed by more solid reality.

Just a late night musing.

W

[Ed Blagden]

David,

I am also one in favour of the entire scene.

To my mind the extract is not sufficiently devoid of substance to pull it off as an abstract.  Whereas, in the full image it is easier to accept the beauty of the movement when framed by more solid reality.

Just a late night musing.

W

I agree, the wider crop is better.  The original was not abstract enough.

I like the colours in this one - the blue of the tree and the vibrant oranges and reds in the leaves is a great combination.  To answer your original question, no it is not a cliché, and the reason it is not is because of the wacky colours.  Was there a bit of foolin' with the HSL sliders and / or split toning?  Whatever, it worked.

[David Eckels]

I appreciate the feed back everyone; very helpful. Ed, not a lot of wackiness. Upped vibrance and ended with pushing up O,Y,G saturation (low 20s) and luminance (low teens). My sense is I get some "pop" with this, but not a dramatic shift. I hope Russ doesn't see this but I will work with the cropping issue. I could have zoomed (couldn't get off path), but thought the "V" of the two logs in the bottom of frame formed a nice anchor for composition, but then the business bothered me. Oh well, early morning musing Thanks again all!

[brandtb]

Dave, some thoughts about the composition...leaving processing aside. the upper three/fifths is strong, the part that doesn't work for me are the rocks at bottom.  Leading lines and lines of directions/vectors...can sometimes be made to "prop up" in the mind... something that isn't strong...i.e. they are only a small part of the equation and sometimes not a part of the equation...will pm later about it. /B

[Ed Blagden]

I appreciate the feed back everyone; very helpful. Ed, not a lot of wackiness. Upped vibrance and ended with pushing up O,Y,G saturation (low 20s) and luminance (low teens). My sense is I get some "pop" with this, but not a dramatic shift. I hope Russ doesn't see this but I will work with the cropping issue. I could have zoomed (couldn't get off path), but thought the "V" of the two logs in the bottom of frame formed a nice anchor for composition, but then the business bothered me. Oh well, early morning musing Thanks again all!

David,

OK - you definitely got the "pop" you were after and good to see you didn't have to do too much pixel mangling to get the result, which from a colour point of view I like very much.  Not that I have anything against pixel mangling, only I find that if you go too far in HSL (especially L) you get get nasty halos etc and generally a Big Digital Mess.  Why don't you want Russ to hear this?  He's mellowing in his old age.  He even said he liked one of my landscape shots which didn't have so much as a trace of the Hand of Man.   

This is one of those nearly-but-not-quite photos which I personally find very useful.  If you are lucky enough to take the perfect shot then there is nothing to learn, nothing to improve.  However the nearly-but-not-quite variety force one to think about what one might have done differently at capture, and if you post them on this forum provoke a lot of input and different viewpoints.  This makes us all the richer. 

[David Eckels]

nearly-but-not-quite

+1
Part of my take-home is that the "seeing" is good, but the execution could have been better. Not to put words in Russ' mouth, but I think he certainly advocates to get as much as absolutely possible right in camera. Cropping can  be an indication that it wasn't. Like you said, "went to school on this one" and I appreciate the lessons.

[Christoph C. Feldhaim]

I think its a very fine shot.
Definitely not cliché.
I'd add a slight vignetting to de-emphasize the corner structures and focus more on the swirling leaves.
Some more slight adjustments might bring it even more on the point.