That Tree, Again

Hi Nancy! I appreciate your willingness to accept brutally honest feedback for the sake of improving an image. I'm the same way. I'll try not to be brutal, but will be honest. Here it goes...I think the way you're composing the image is the problem. You are clearly fascinated with this tree and want to make it the subject of the image. As such, you may be reluctant to exclude any sections of it in the photo. However, I think if you allow yourself to move closer into the tree, focus on only one section of the tree, maybe the most interesting area of branches, this will help showcase the subject a bit more. Try laying on the ground right under the tree and view it from that perspective, or from a few feet away, etc. use a wider aperture to keep the tree in focus but blur the background colors. Another idea is to shoot the tree when the sun is closer to the horizon, and in a position so that it is falling on the bark. This would add interesting contrast. These are just some immediate thoughts that come to mind. Good luck! It is a pretty cool tree.

Natalie covered it really well. If the tree is your main subject, it needs good light to showcase it. And, I like her suggestion of a wider aperture and closer to bring focus on it.

Hi Nancy Lea, this is an interesting tree and well worth working on (as you clearly are). I would try moving to the right so that the tree stands on the left and the branches lead into the frame. You might try getting the edges of the branches just above or slightly to the left of the low point in the mountains. The lighting here is really nice (although it looks like you may have pushed the saturation too far) and there are some bright spots in clouds through the tree and right at the pass. To work on these spots do your dodging through a luminosity mask (e.g. Tony Kuyper's web site), that should let you darken the sky/clouds without darkening the branches or ridges. Similarly, you could burn through a mask and lighten the trees just a bit with minimal effect on their surroundings.

I think Natalie had some great ideas. Hope they help:)

I like the scene and can see it's appeal. For me, the sky and clouds feel too saturated in color and the non-sky areas a bit too dark, especially the background trees. Every image seems to require it's own balance of color, saturation, and brightness/contrast, and these seems to be some imbalance in these still in this image.

Interesting subject, but I've seen better ones from you. Tony has a good point about the balance issues here.

The tree is interesting, but about a third of the image is blank sky and doesn't add anything. My thought would be to experiment more with composition as others have noted, or perhaps shoot again with a fuller, more interesting sky (with more clouds) as background. Keep at it - this is a worthy subject!