Existential woes

[Stefan Stuart Fletcher]

I recently upgraded from a 40D to a 5D mk II and the performance of this body has brought my meagre photographic abilities into doubt. The learning curve is steep, as shown by my submission below. I took this with a 24-70 @ f/3.5, ISO 400. In Lightroom 2, I desaturated the RAW capture, set recovery to +70 and boosted the clarity. I increased the contrast and sharpness, but I’m just not getting any joy. Any suggestions?
This image has got me thinking. Digital photography and post-processing can turn any initial exposure into so many different images, I feel lost in all the phase-space images this one could have become. I intentionally emphasised the blacks at the top to highlight the bark texture, but I’m wondering whether it’s just a bad composition. Thanks for your help getting me out of my existential angst! Please be unsparingly critical. It’ll help me climb that steep learning curve.


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[TheRoff]

Well, I know how to help that existential crisis you have: Wrap up that 5D along with that lens and send it to me.[:D]


It seems your technically perfect photo suffers only from a flat light on a hazy day, and no amount of post processing is going to add the color and depth added from light in the "golden hours." Visit the tree in better more flattering light and I bet the crisis resolves itself.





http://i.pbase.com/g3/62/861962/2/102720437.psR7FcS3.jpg

[Sean Setters]

Or hit the tree with an off-camera flash to create your own more-flattering (and interesting) light...

[Ken Schwarz]

I like questions and challenges like this one. I always try to
salvage pictures like this. This tree is amazing. It must have been
very impressive when you were there. I imagine that the texture and
those big holes drew you in. The problem is that the camera sees things
very differently. For me, it's a never-ending adventure to understand
this. Anyway, my suggestion is to flip the picture so that the diagonal
points up and to the right and then to crop in tight and rotate on the center of
interest. This might be improved if you were to go B&W--the texture
and form are more interesting than the color. I'd like to see more shadow detail. But the jpeg you put up
has so little tone information left that I can't try it here. Give it a
shot and let me know what you think.





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[Tim]

With exception of the very dark spot up top, I really like this picture. I feel the dual colors give it more character. Its sort of like the tree knows something we don't. That probably sounds crazy.

[Stefan Stuart Fletcher]

Thanks, Guys, for your much-appreciated input. It certainly got me thinking. I forgot to include the RAW capture (only resized to 800 px and converted to jpg in LR2).


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[Stefan Stuart Fletcher]

It's olive-picking time and the trees are heavy and bent with fruit. The old ones really grow twisted and misshapen. This shot was taken about an hour before sunset in a narrow valley. I really wanted the gnarled, knotty trunk with those holes (are they nesting caches?) to "pop" out with an exaggeration of the bent trunk, hence the fairly narrow DOF. Still, the best-laid plans of mice, men and amateur photographers...

[peety3]

Go thinner (DOF) and wider - a wider focal length will "put more distance" between the near trunk and the far branches, assuming the same amount of near trunk is in the shot.


See http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Pictures/Picture.aspx?Picture=2004-03-19_08-33-40 for a quickie example.

[Stefan Stuart Fletcher]

CThanks Electrolyte for morale booster, suggestions and humour. Although I beg to differ. Martini trees are tall, green and have medals on them. I took shots of the species known to whoozy botanists as "excuse for Martini" trees.


As for PS, I have to resist the temptation to turn my captures in PoS... Perhaps because the whisky trees grow very near by.


Cheersh!