Valley View Glades - Part 2

[LCARSx32]

This is part 2 of my outing. Please, tear them apart.

Thanks,
Ray

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

I think I like #4 the best... But may I suggest a re-crop? Something like...

 

[LCARSx32]

Thanks Busrider. #4's my favorite, too. I really like to play with depth of field. Do you see anything wrong or that could be better in the others? Are they uninteresting, or flawed in some other way?

Thanks,
Ray

 

[BuS_RiDeR]

To be honest... The shrooms are the only one I liked. Maybe the "Trail" one... I just don't find them interesting... Butt that may just be a personal thing.

However... that being said, I do like the DoF work.

 

[brianT]

I find them somewhat interesting because I do a lot of hiking and walking through the forest, and I generally enjoy looking at photos of nature. I did a really quick edit for some photos of what I would've done with these images if they were mine. Basically, I feel you just need to brighten them up. The day you took these looked like a nice day with some sun shining (partial clouds though). So I think people want to see a bright and colorful set of photos. Some of them seem underexposed, thus creating too many dark areas. I think the forest in some really nice bright sunlight is more reminiscent of bright colors. The camera tends to want to darken too much. Obviously you want to make sure you don't blow out any highlights too!

In the exif of your photos it says all these photos use auto white balance. With the cameras I've used (but I can't say this for all of them of course) the auto white balance is not very good when shooting in the forest. You need to set the white balance in the field or shoot RAW and adjust in post-processing. Maybe some cameras can handle white balance under the trees much better, but I generally find the camera can't decide what color temperature to apply while under the trees.

 

[IlSan]

I will go along with brianT on the brightening of the images, except for the shrooms.
I really like that image, especially with its original lighting as it has this deep forest feel to it.

I very much enjoyed the 1st one as well - just something about it that has me scrolling up and down again just to look at it. Guess the DoF is what gets me, but couldn't put my finger on it.
Really nice image.

Shrooms by far the fav

The other images, not sure, don't "call out to me" - but again, that is just my personal feeling / opinion.

Shrooms cropped also look great :thumbup:

 

[LCARSx32]

Thanks for the comments. I see what you mean, Brian. I like the edits you did. I wonder if my preference for night photography has something to do with my habit of underexposing images. I'll keep that in mind when I go back this weekend with my sister. She bought a Pextax k-1000 a couple months ago and wants to learn how to use it.

BTW: I normally shoot in RAW, but forgot to clear off my card before I left the house. With RAW, I would have only had 30 or so pictures left. So I switched to large JPG instead. I won't make that mistake this weekend.

 

[michaelleggero]

i'd say the mushrooms are intresting, that's the only one that made me stop and look, i agree with the cropping though, play around and do some sort of a creative crop

Mike Leggero

http://www.michaelleggero.com