Feedback on a few photographs wanted

[flyingember]

I truly see your point, and I agree. Thank you for explaining What do you think if I crop away most of the photo, and just have a small portion of it. Still overkill of random leaves? And I did some contrasting.

100x better. I have something to focus on and the leaves play against the snow. it's now a photo with interesting shapes I can get into.

the leaves may be too dark now, but that's personal preference

 

[flyingember]

not white balance, exposure. cameras average in grayscale in P mode.

Yes, it is an exposure issue. I say WB... because that is how I fixed it... "Auto White balance" in Gimp on the "Colors" menu.

which is different from changing the exposure. it just makes the objects which should be white as white. case in point, photoshop has a seperate white balance adjustment and an exposure adjustment in CS5 (not in CS3, don't know about CS4) because they're not the same thing

that said, your edits are better. a touch over exposed but definitely better

 

[flyingember]

Just to see, is my editing of the following photograph an improvement?

Too much green?

there's a simple question to ask yourself.

does the edit remove detail I want to have noticeable at first glance?

the edited one is much less flat which is good. in the first one you can see all the little light spots in the moss. in the edited one it's harder but the pattern in the bark comes out. they're all give and take aspects

as a whole I'd say your highlights are fine but the shadows are too dark. edit your curves to lighten the dark end just a touch and see what you think

 

[K8-90]

SNOW

It's all been said. I think 2, 3 & 5 have a lot to offer, just need some tweaking.