Sugar Maple in the Sun

I took this picture at a low aperture to achieve the sunburst

effect. Any comments you may have on the effectiveness of the

composition, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

 

I took another shot similar to this to produce a flare throughout the

image:

href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?

photo_id=423124">http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?

photo_id=423124

. I would like to know which one you think may be

a stronger composition. Thanks.

This one. Blago

While I like the flare effect in the other version, it distracts too much from the maple tree itself. I like this one better.

I certainly prefer this one to the one with the 'flare' effect. Nicely exposed. Just how slow was the shutter to keep the aperture small YET have no moments register from the leaves?

If I remember correctly, I shot this at f/22 for 1/6 second. I think I bracketed between 1/4 and 1/8 second, and they all turned out okay, but I think this is the middle exposure.

I love the idea of this shot; I think I'll steal it! You have controlled the flare of the sun very well, and rendered the sun as a "star". Unfortunately, the maple leaves, while colorful, are lacking somewhat in contrast and texture. But I don't know whether it is even technically possible to do better.

Brian—I've taken a lot of fall color maple shots, it is possible to do better technically, but getting good photographs is surprisingly hard.

Scott—I think this is a good, attention grabbing photo, but it's really too bad the leaves in the lower half of the picture aren't backlit. Also, the branches don't really do anything of thier own, though the do make for a nice black to reference the leaves against. The color on the dwarf maple outside my house was spectacular this fall. I took a lot of internal tree portraits like this one and none of them were really compelling because the branches weren't interesting in their own right. What did work for me was to go a lot longer and work with just a few leaves and maybe a single branch. It's just a thought, but give your 100-300 a whirl next fall.

Let me join the chorus here: In The Sun is the better of the two.

The colors are nice and I like the starburst.The black branches add to the contrast.