Looking Up

Gallery: LandscapePosted October 3, 2010123 views7 comments

Austin, Texas does a marvelous job of preserving living trees, and I've found this old, badly scarred Monterrey Oak a couple of miles from where I live.

I have yet to get the perfect light for this tree and I've visited the tree about three times now.

In this scene I wanted to show the tree limbs stretch out and appear to intertwine.

Here, I focused on creating an abstract from the tree bark.

The B/W conversion was done with NIK Silver EFEX; I added a touch of vignette so the viewer's eyes would focus on the stretched out tree limbs.

D700
f/16
30mm
-.67EV
ISO 400
MLU
tripod
cable release

Thanks for viewing and leaving your comments and critiques.

Carol

Comments

7 comments

Comment posted by Bill Chambers on October 3, 2010 at 9:51 PM

Nice job Carol. I like the job Silver Efex does on conversions, thinking about buying myself. For my tastes the vignette is a bit heavy, but that's personal taste. I like the way the limbs are stretching outward here.

Registered on April 10, 2005, 753 Posts, 21216 Comments

Comment posted by Morris McClung on October 3, 2010 at 10:08 PM

Hmm, you made me feel nostalgic for a tree.

I like the comp and the conversion.

Registered on May 7, 2007, 670 Posts, 19650 Comments

Comment posted by Wayne Jones on October 3, 2010 at 10:12 PM

Wow, Carol, those oaks are sure providing a lot of inspiration for you. I can see why you want to keep going back. I like the way this makes me feel, kind of like I am looking straight up and turning around, making the up/down directionality almost irrelevant. Nice conversion!

Registered on April 18, 2007, 953 Posts, 6435 Comments

Comment posted by John Williams on October 3, 2010 at 10:59 PM

Is this the same tree we e-mailed each other about Carol? This one looks great!

Registered on September 6, 2007, 221 Posts, 5985 Comments

Comment posted by Doug Roane on October 3, 2010 at 11:07 PM

The comp works well, Carol, but I find the vignette a distraction.

Registered on December 12, 2008, 213 Posts, 2226 Comments

Comment posted by Daniel Rappaport on October 4, 2010 at 12:46 AM

Well composed. Like the way you've framed the center highest branch. Nice B&W tones.

Registered on September 9, 2009, 294 Posts, 2006 Comments

Comment posted by Chris Chamberlain on October 6, 2010 at 12:55 AM

Nice job. I've never really been able to pull this off. You did well with this one.

Chris

Registered on March 13, 2007, 500 Posts, 8365 Comments