trees

Beautiful composition and light Chris!well done!

Very good, impressive 3D effect!

Just beautiful. Very well done.

Excellent work! (6)

Impressive and extraordinary work Chris (6). 

Extraordinario trabajo, mi felicitacion.    Best regards

This is well done ! Very nice useof light with perfect effects, congrats. 

Hi Chris,   Excellent, amazing and most beautiful.  Love the beauty of the soft warm lighting with the sunlit greens and the shadows. Great composition and just so beautiful.  Best regards,  Sherry

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I don't like this picture. There is, however, nothing intrinsically "wrong" with it. It does grab you momentarily. The dramatic back light through the trees does catch your eye and makes a pretty linear design element. Putting a little red/green color contrast in the fog does dress it up a bit - kind of painterly. I suppose the shadows and sun could be considered as the center of interest. I have no doubt this image will be appealing to many viewers.

What I don't like about the picture is after the initial grab it leaves you flat very quickly. I think the rapid tiring speed is related to the lack of a strong center of interest. If a deer silhouette or hunter or some other element were introduced it would elevate this scene to a more interesting level. With the exception of the green fog (green fog?) this shot is just so overdone it fails to fire much interest in me. It's a nice scene, well rendered but needing something to hook me to make me want to look deeper...and longer. Like good elevator music, it's a pleasant rendition, inoffensive but, ultimately, not very compelling.

As Louis Meluso says, there's nothing "wrong" with this, but for me, it's just another idealized sun-shining-through-the-trees-with-a-golden-light photograph. The only thing this photograph says to me is yes, the sun will actually shine through trees in the forest and it can look pretty. I knew that already, so this photo breaks no new ground for me. Some photographs really work for me. This one does not. I lost interest in it quicker than it took me to write this critique.

Louis thought of elevator music. I thought of the crass art galleries in Carmel. This the sort of picture I'd expect to find there. Just waiting for some aesthetically dull rich person to go for it. This is the sort of photograph i'd expect to find on Mitt Romney's wall.

That said, I do not dislike the image. I think it is interesting in the way it all comes at you. In fact as first impression and even second impression go it is quite dynamic. But as I have often said in this forum, you need something more when the novelty wears off.

After the novelty wears off there is little that is interesting here.

When i look at this very well realized image i like the beautiful lighting and the quite dynamic composition. But i agree with Louis, Jim, and Alex: there is'nt a center of interest; the picture represents a forest scene with a dramatic light where...nothing happens.

Actually, I think this image isn't all that bad (he says with some reservation). I find the "circle" of trees here interesting and the glow within (reflected light) and color palette is very pleasing to me right now. But, as I have said before, it is always dicey to include the sunburst in an image, it can take it to trite pretty quickly. There is some really odd vertical banding/striping throughout the image which I don't find helpful and the blurring seems to take the image more towards a Children's book illustration quality.

In any case, I like some things about this (maybe the potential I see) and think maybe more could have been made out of this scene than what we have here. It does feel a little too contrived, but I just voted and that maybe the reason I am not totally put off is that this just seems to fit the day.....

I love it!!!! very nice.

I am not always a fan of realism in photos, but I think that the overblown color palette here is too much and lacks subtelty. The considerable symmetry of the composition is not necessarily a disadvantage, but the lack of a major subject element and the lack of any consequent tension seems to rob it of its communicative power.

The elves have shown their love of chromatically vivid images here. For me the latter characteristic detracts from any beauty the image might otherwise display, as it is well exposed. I tried it as a B&W conversion that I find somewhat more interesting for what is essentially an ortherwise interesting image for its line based composition.

I agree. The desaturation takes a rather saccharine and uninteresting photo and give it some much-needed punch. I imagine with the right B&W treatment, and maybe a bit of judicious cropping, it could even look a little foreboding. But since I don't make a habit of fooling with another photographer's work, I'll leave that to others.

This reminds me of the experience I've had standing in the middle of a cottonwood plantation, with trees spaced close together in very regular rows and the sun barely able to penetrate the canopy. Because of that triggered reminder, and in response to those who may not see a center of interest, I see the entire frame as a center of interest. It's a reminder of an experience I've had standing in the middle of an unusual, unnatural, sterile except for the trees, kind of environment, marveling at how different such a plantation is from a natural woodland. From that point of view, though limited, I can appreciate the photograph from Chris.

The green color may be due to a light, morning mist surrounding the vegetation. But in this era of easy digital manipulation, it may also be added or enhanced; to my eye, it looks like the latter. However, I'm very uncomfortable in making such guesses, because if I'm wrong I feel like I've insulted the photographer and I've deprived myself of simply enjoying a natural phenomenon. Some would say it shouldn't matter: I should either like or dislike the aspect of the green in the photo, regardless of its origin. But to me its origin does matter -- it always has and I suspect it always will matter.

The trees are unusual, and I wish I knew the species. The lower branches look like Lombardy poplars, but the few very large branches say they are something else. The bark looks somewhat like cedar. This may be entirely irrelevant to most photographers and especially to a photography critique, but as a biologist with a camera I find the question comes quite naturally.

In the end, any appeal this photograph has for me comes primarily because of the reminder of experiences I've had in different kinds of woodlands. Trees that are so densely spaced that they shut out most of the light, not allowing any understory to grow, and affecting the survival and growth of lower branches may be interesting because they are rare. Such woodlands are usually very quiet spaces, because very few animals live there or use those woodlands, and few people seem to want to be in woods that are so dense. The primary reason they are rare and seldom visited is (IMO) because they are usually artificially planted and privately owned, and I'd guess that's the case here.

This isn't a critique as much as an individual's reaction to a photograph. Perhaps my reaction is more positive because places like this have intrigued me in the past.

I like this photo. I'm not sure why green belongs in the sky in this image but I'll take it. If I had captured this image I would be immensely proud. It spells hope. For the last week I have helped individuals and communities deal with immeasurable losses post Super Storm Sandy. These trees, the sun, the glow send me a message that all is going to be well. Wishful thinking? Maybe. But well timed. Thanks Chris Kaddas. Made my day.

I'm in awe in front of this. Powerful emotions! Strong colors and plenty of energy which seems to be channeled straight through the viewer. Well done here! Only point of question is the dark end, somehow my eyes keep wandering, trying to find details in the branches.. but still, amazing work and plenty of energy!

This is a decent photograph that suffers from heavy handed processing. The green fog, at first interesting, suddenly makes me feel like I should be holding my breath. It does grab you at first, but as others note, continued inspection leaves you wondering what you would do to fix it. "Less" is often "more". This is just such a case - or should have been.

I'm somewhat surprised that there is any controversy about the green light here, it is simply backlit foilage--trees or bushes--which isn't an unusual event in nature.

I was also surprised by the suggestion--which I hear often with such images--that there isn't a real subject here. I don't know that I totally agree with Stephen but I think he is more right than wrong suggesting that the entire image is the subject. Often subject can be created both with visible and invisible elements and here, to me, the subject is primarily the central part of the image, the grouping of trees with the sunburst (it really isn't a sunburst, more just the bright sun). It is from this arrangement than one would derive the real content of the image.

Looking at the b/w version, I am more convinced that before that I have seen "this" somewhere else, in a Children's book or in some fantasy type context. I think that is this familiarity--and maybe some positive sense I elicited from that other image--that stuck a chord with me (like maybe something by Maurice Sendak?).

But for whatever reason, I get a mixed feeling on the image. It is at once manipulative, painterly rather than photographic and a bit overdone and yet I still find some positive sense with it. It might end up being fleeting, but it just has a nice feeling to it and sometimes that's all that matters at the moment.

It was the distribution of the green light (particularly the narrow column that reaches the top of the frame just to the right of center that doesn't have a counterpart on the far left) and the intensity of light at the extreme right and left) that left me wondering. I also think John has described the subject of Chris's photograph better than I; still, the subject is a considerable portion of the frame. I sometimes confuse the subject for the reason [i assume] the photograph was made; it's easier to distinguish between the two (IMO) in many other categories of photography (e.g., portraits, street, birds, insects, etc.) than it is in landscape photography, and often more difficult still in abstracts.

Stephen, those areas of green you describe look like what I described, backlit foliage. I think the center one is just an anomaly as to where there is green to be backlit. There are too many "holes" of blue around these areas to be anything else and just look pretty natural--aside from the blurring--to me.