Turn at the Dead Tree
by Skip

Comment by Gordon:
Reminds me of an Ent from the Lord of the Rings, in many ways - with the almost 'arm-like' branches.

Compositionally being a bit lower might also work, to isolate the tree more against the sky and increase the size with some perspective. You might struggle to retain the sweep of the road, but getting close to the center line might really emphasize/ dramatize that sweep along with the tree- probably then becomes a portrait orientation shot too.

Technically to my eye it looks a bit over sharpened and over saturated - there is some haloing on the horizon and around the tree branches, and the yellow/brown parts of the tree appear to be oversaturated to the point of losing some detail ? (you can see this in levels in Photoshop btw)

and there's reason to believe
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
Wow. Totally underrated. The clouds are gorgeous. Wonderful capture.

Message edited by author 2005-01-26 10:19:02.

Genesis
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
I disagree with everyone who said something about changing the composition of this shot. This is eerie, beautiful, and perfect. What a gorgeous find. Thanks for being such a cool participant here, prompting me to comment on your images. It helped me to find a new favorite image.

Before They Fall
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
I agree with Kavey- a lot of times there is no purpose for selective desat. Here it works well. The only thing that confuses me is the yellow wishbone shaped branch (?) directly under the tree. I might pull that out. I like the soft look this has.

Extreme Urgency
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
You know, I've seen shots in National Geographic and the like where there is little or no sharp focus because of the speed of the motion- but because of the talent and skill of the shooter, the image works. I think it is very easy to fail at a shot like this, but you succeeded. It'd be great if more of us could open our minds to shots like this in challenges and vote them highly (instead of just reviewing them well in people's portfolios).

Anyone Seen Laurie?
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
Sounds like you've already worked this quite a bit. The first thing that popped out at me (after "wow, that is a great shot of the birds") was the noise in the sky. NeatImage? I know it'd be a tough call cause you'd lose some of the detail in the clouds. Which I also think look very cool.

The Unseen Hand
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
Yep, I would have had a hard time with this one too. Having never seen one of these (I know, how weird is that), I wouldn't have been able to figure out what was going on here. I do like the bright blue background against the other colors here.

Cobblestone II
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
Even better than the previous one I commented on ;) A crop of just the "squares" in the foreground might make for an interesting abstract as well.

As Daylight Fades
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
Jeez, I wish I'd voted on this. I would have put it high! This is really lovely. Very pretty bokeh, and as mentioned earlier in the comments, integral to the image. Great idea. Now I wanna do it ;)

Polly's First Kiss
by Skip

Comment by ahaze:
This is hilarious. It looks like it's about to *eat* Polly's head!! Personally I think the colors are great the way they are! It would be cool to see the whole dragonfly in focus from wingtip to wingtip.