Untitled

Critique and comments are welcome. Thank You.

Beautiful work, Evgeni! Best regards, Ruud.

I like your capture of the fog and the fact that Winter still remains. Great use of the trunks size and the small trees frailty. Well done.

fergi

Intriguing image, nice contrast between the dark, thick trunks and the small, delicate, tree with just a few remaining leaves. Maybe a bit more saturation to bring out the leaves?

Very nice Evgeni,

 

Really like the minimalist viewpoint which is nice and subtle in the end.

 

Jon

Beautiful simple composition, very therapeutic image. I love it!

 

Randy

Very good work!

Very nice photo. Jitka

Fine and refined composition

Great capture, and very special mood. Well done.

great work - i love it - think that the yellow blob of leaves at the bottom of the image could be removed? it distracts a little

Wonderful! I love it! Ivana

excellent

Very good work. It is well composed and presented.

Good work - congratulation !

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Photo with a very beautiful mood ( in a High Key sense ). Certainly, if the front branch of the tree contains details the work will be more amazing. But anyhow, i wish this photo is mine. Bravo Evgeni Donev

Simple but very strong shot.Nice view point and very well focused.The BG is really nice.Good texture,also.The atmosphere showed as well as possible.
Best regards(Bobby).

I don't get this photo at all.

I think I need a break from this forum, it has become too tedious making the same comment each week.

Yet another example of an image which could have aspired to being ordinary but instead was ruined by weird, sloppy, unnecessarily heavy handed post production. I am uncertain of what was done to make those leaves look so intrusive and ugly but whatever it was, the effect does not work for me at all. If I cover up the right side of the frame the left side looks okay.

If you've ever been alone in a forest in a dense fog, you will come away with an understanding of a purpose of this photo (I said "a" purpose, not "the" purpose, because I can only speculate as to why Evgeni took this photo). The feeling I get in these places is a deep sense of quiet, mystery, peacefulness, as if time is suspended and these living things are stilled for a moment. It really is a wonderful experience, and it's one reason why I look for fog every winter morning when I get up, knowing I'll change my morning plans and go out with my camera if fog is present.

Some technical issues keep me from being fully immersed in this photo. They are little things involving composition, but that's one of the biggest challenges of landscape / nature photography -- finding that aesthetic arrangement of natural elements that were not necessarily placed there for the purpose of being captured in a photographic expression. The two small groups of leaves on the lower right borders are disconnected from anything, and that (IMO) detracts from the composition. The colors of the tree trunks are puzzling to me, only because I've never seen trees similar to birches or aspens that are so strongly bi-colored like this, especially where the coloration occupies about half of the trunk but is also randomly distributed. I'm quite sure it's natural (in the sense of not being added by processing) because it's also seen in the background trees largely obscured by the fog. I just have to get beyond my own limited experiences (as a biologist and photographer) regarding this coloration. Also, I find the nearly solid black trunk in the foreground to be a bit jarring. Finally and perhaps most importantly, the small tree in the foreground on the right is an outlier in terms of its form: it's very "busy" with twigs and does not contribute to the same sense or feelings provided by the other smooth tree trunks scattered in the fog; I would have looked for a composition that avoided this particular tree or at least put it in the far background. Similar small trees can be seen in the background, but they are not nearly as busy, and they reflect the forms of the larger trees.

Evgeni has done something with the composition that I think is very effective, and that's to have nearby objects that are less affected by the fog set against similar background objects that are strongly affected by the fog. That, to me, is usually (but not always) more effective in terms of aesthetics than a single tree (or other compositional element), or especially a group of trees, all obscured equally by the fog and the composition consisting of nothing other than faint outlines.

I like the photo, and I've tried to state why I like it, what it says to me based on experiences that I've had in the past, and compositional tweaks that I would try to make in order to strengthen its meaning if I were taking a similar photograph. I'd love to sit down with Evgeni and hear his thoughts and find out if they are similar to mine, and the same holds true regarding others who respond to this POW.

Gordon, from my point of view, I don't see any manipulation at all in this photo -- it looks perfectly natural to me, similar to aspen forests I've seen in the Pacific Northwest in the late autumn. In a sense, you made the same comment about that small tree as I did. It's just that you apparently think the leaves were artificially colored, while I think the form of the small tree doesn't contribute to the photograph in terms of what I see in the other trees.

That's a troubling effect of manipulation: once it starts, it can be seen everywhere, even in places where perhaps it hasn't been applied (but that's just my educated guess here).

First, since it is coming up so soon, again, I agree with Stephen regarding there being a lack of manipulation here, this looks very natural to me as well. I even have seen this sort of darkening on tree trunks, I believe it is probably due to water having soaked those parts of the trunks (maybe from the fog and the variations due to wind patterns).

I will be honest here--and normally leave this to last-- that I do not like this framing of the image--the border. There are two different things going on and I just don't get it, it is just sort of weird to me and irrelevant to the image. The outer frame is reminiscent of a holga's natural vignette and then we have a precise rectangle set on it--I am just scratching my head on this one!

As to the image itself, I am with Stephen regarding the intruding, yet orphaned leaves here. Since manipulation has become such a bad thing here, I would have broken the branches on those to have them eliminated and so this scene would be as captured in camera (actually, I might have done just that or I would clone them out for sure!)

I think the juxtaposition of the older, simple, elegant trunks--and I really do like the dark one splitting the frame--and the more chaotic growth of the youthful tree is a good idea, but that big vertical leaf and the diagonal (broken) stem are also very awkward--more cloning or trimming on site would be called for. Natural phenomenon are great unless they screw up your photograph. Seriously, we are making photographs--better to tend the garden before shooting if possible. If that is objectionable, then don't make the image if it doesn't work--can't have it both ways.

Anyway, a nice idea, I just wish it had been done a bit better----and that border eliminated.

Stephen, I live in a mixed hardwood forest and have done so for the last 19 years so I too have seen many foggy days in the woods. I think that possibly the bi-coloured effect is the result of moist and dry sections of trunk side by side. I see this often in driving rain or sometimes when snow adheres to trunks and then melts, or at this time of year when frost forms on tree trunks over night and then melt leaving the frosted areas wet and dark and the dry areas light. The randomness of the bi-coloured effect would seem to rule out rain.
You are correct in that it can be difficult to determine with any certainty to what extent a small jpeg on the web has been tweaked. For me the important issue is that the leaves look to have been painted in with solid colour and that they lack any detail, much as I would expect to see in an area of oof bokeh or a clipped colour. When I blow this up a bit, some of the leaves are only partially coloured and other have colour spilling out beyond the edges of the leaves, again there could be other explanations but the general feel and result of this look, is to create a jarring and incongruous aspect to an image which seems otherwise to be intended to convey serenity and calm. I do not mind the busyness of the sapling I think it adds some depth and interest, although cropping out some of the right side of the sapling would create a better balance.

John, our posts crossed.
The " broken stem "is a twig which has fallen from a higher point in the canopy and lodged there. No harm in simply removing it, likewise pulling off those horrible leaves would have caused no damage either.
.... and yes the frame is an eyesore.