Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: armand on April 02, 2012, 10:37:59 pm

Title: Few trees
Post by: armand on April 02, 2012, 10:37:59 pm
continuing the series, hopefully will get more comments than my last post
Title: Re: Few trees
Post by: shutterpup on April 02, 2012, 11:03:43 pm
Really like the first one; the rest do nothing for me.

I see a saguaro in the background in #1; did you see any instances where an ironwood tree, a mesquite tree or palo verde is up over a small saguaro? It provides the necessary shade for the saguaro to thrive. It's called a nursery tree and as the saguaro grows, the saguaro takes all the water that the nursery tree would get and the nursery tree dies. You'll see a lot of instances of that situation in the desert.

In case you didn't notice, I was raised in Tucson and after 40 years of living in other states, my husband and I have retired here   ;)
Title: Re: Few trees
Post by: wolfnowl on April 03, 2012, 01:35:10 am
I find the yellows a tad oversaturated in the first one.  I prefer the 2nd to the 3rd, but I like the apparently random pattern of the branches.  The last one doesn't do much for me, I'm afraid.

Mike.
Title: Re: Few trees
Post by: armand on April 03, 2012, 05:37:43 pm
The yellow may seem somewhat saturated mainly because it was after a rain (but before the snow, see attached photo) and I used a polarizer.
In postprocessing I played with the curves, and touched only the vibrance (I went back and forth, the effect on the yellow is minimal).

I really like those branches, not sure why. Even more when I leave the photo somewhat soft and with less contrast (nr 2), I plan to print it big and see if the effect remains.


PS, the first one was made in Saguaro NP
Title: Re: Few trees
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on April 03, 2012, 07:22:04 pm
I like the softness of #2 but I prefer the cropping of #3. In #2 I find the two branches that come into the image in the upper left corner are distracting. The composition works better for me in #3.

Eric
Title: Re: Few trees
Post by: armand on April 11, 2012, 07:50:32 pm
Few more shots from Saguaro NP