Lichenby
NodeComment: Greetings from the Critique Club!
Free Studies offer all of us to explore our world and find and share something special, in our own time and place. It is when we as photographers, take a mundane subject and turn it into art
Composition:
Your ability to frame this in the camera, as seen is a good sign - you understand the use of a strong diagonal composition. There isn't one singlemost area that catches my eye to hold it, as the main focal point is the branch, spanning across most of the shot, but naturally falls in the area of the upper half of the branch. There is an area below where the branch splits, that appears a bit out of focus that seems to throw things off a bit visually in my opinion.
Lighting:
Your lighting here is very pleasing to the eye, with just enough highlights & backlighting, yet has some areas of shadow, still with detail. Anytime a shot can have detail in the shadows AND detail in backlit highlights without blowing it out is amazing to me.
Post-Processing:
With the details and clarity here, what else needed post-processing? Often we fiddle with shots "just because" and often make them worse (guilty here). Your minimal approach to post-processing works.
Suggestions/Improvements:
I have a very hard time knowing what to suggest here in the way of improvement(s). Over-saturation of things is not the way to go as most do.
I took this into Photoshop myself, and first thing I did was Adjustments, Levels, Options, default 0.5 in Shadow & Highlights and noticed the background went more into the blue realm. Not knowing if the Lichen was really yellowish, I did Adjustments, Hue/Saturation, Yellow, and bumped the Hue to the right about 10 pts, Saturation to the left about 5 pts. and brought the lightness down about 10 pts. This took the yellows in the branch to a green look, subdued, and a little darker. Then I went mad with it (LOL) - took the brightness down about 35 pts, and contrast down 2 pts and made the image seem more powerful.
Going back and comparing yours and mine, I realized that after making it look what I would think would be natural, realized I lost what I liked the most in your version - the "glow".
Mine looked like a nice, color-corrected branch with green growth.
Yours had magic.
I should have just enjoyed yours instead of trying to fiddle with it.
Congrats on a well seen and natural image Bob.!
I hope this was useful to you, and please feel free to contact me via PM if you have any questions regarding this critique or anything else relating to the site in general.
Regards,
Brad
Message edited by author 2005-05-02 03:35:31. 
Photographer found comment helpful.
