Tres Hermanos +rp

Barking up the right tree.  It took me a moment to realize the bark was charred as I perused the smaller image.  Very sharp with nice warm contrasts between the undamaged wood and the charred areas.  Is that a sliver of moss or lichen?  Superb textures and vertical comp.  Are you and Preston willing to discuss your use of TK's stuff?

David,

Thanks for your comment.  Yes, I'd be more than happy to expand on the use of Tony's "stuff."  I guess I shouldn't assume that everyone has or uses Tony Kuypers actions, luminosity masks, etc. etc.  It's just a part of my workflow and I often take for granted how much his stuff contributes to my images. 

I've included a little more detail in the original post.  If you or anyone wants further expansion, I'd be happy to go over.

I know I've been away, but wasn't there some discussion around "before and after" and sharing processing techniques.  It could be out there, I haven't looked around.  This might be a good time?

Lon, This is very nicely done. I think you brought the combination of light, darkness, color, textures and detail together just beautifully in this image. I actually looked at the larger version for awhile now and for some reason it just kept drawing me in and made me think about it. That is always a very good thing and says a lot about this picture. Nice work!

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

When I first saw the thumbnail, I thought it was Preston's.   Regardless, I love the detail and contrast Lon.  Its so wonderful to see your work again....  Our youngst son just finished up his first season on a fire crew in Idaho with the US Forest Service this month so this image has significance to me.

Hey Lon, welcome back!  The larger version really pops as well as showing off some great details and subtle (Kuyperesque) colors in the char.

 Hi  Lon   The shapes  and texture of the bark are in  harmony  with the stunning  color... love it

Albert Darmo
Canada

I like this a lot Lon. More than your previous grass image. This is starting to look like some of Anil's best work. Charred wood is definitely a very photogenic subject I've recently decided. The only nit I have is that small white vertical line in the bottom right corner. I would clone that out.

Nice warm and cool tones to go with the bark patterns and charcoal.  Very minor, but I might burn down or clone out the white line on the lower right side (a bright eye magnet on the edge of the frame).  Well done, Senor.

This is real nice bark image, Lon. The tones and color look very nice. I do agree with comments about that white line, though. The alternating war/cool areas play well together. Well done, sir!

--P

Shouldn't Maggie be the Bark Master of your gang?

You sure are making a nice comeback! The details and colors are amazing, you guys know how to make these charred trees look very vivid and alive, if that makes any sense. I would be tempted to crop out the bright white stripe to the right, both because of the stripe itself, but also because the surrounding blacks seem to have e greenish tint which doesn't really fit with the rest of the photo. So I think I would remove the "charred column" at the right.

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions.  Yup, in my haste to post, I overlooked that eye magnet on the right edge.  I've cloned that out, did a slight crop on all edges and also desaturated the green on the right side.  Good catch!

I don't know if Preston recalled this or not, but I'll mention this since no one made the observation - or perhaps its too obvious??

I've titled this "Tres Hermanos" which of course is "Three Brothers."  This is a 3 image focus stack and there are 3 separate trees shown here.  If you look on the right 1/3 of the image, it's apparent there is a distinct separation between the 2 trees on the right.  I don't recall exactly, but I believe there is at least 6 feet of depth between the 1st and last tree. In other words, I'm looking at these trees at probably a 45deg angle - and NOT straight on.  I almost did this as a grab shot. I pretty much did this as a test to see how well or how valuable focus stacking would be.  I was fairly close since the focal length was something likd 58mm.  And the aperture was f/6.3 for each image.  Anyway, I was very happy with the results of this one in terms of the success of the technique (it's tac sharp edge to edge.)  And even luckier the image came out good enough to post.

thanks again!  feels good to be back.

Here is the repost too.

This is gorgeous, both in terms of the detail in the bark and the contrast in colors between charred and healthy bark. I had not noticed that this is a composite image until after I read your second post, but even then it is very hard to tell, at least for me.

Wonderfully subdued colors and crisp image. It is amazing what trees go through in their live span before becoming the future natural fertilizer. I am not bothered about the white line. It looks like a bit of resin dripping.
Jim

lovely abstract. Works even better with a crop.

I don't know if Preston recalled this or not, but I'll mention this since no one made the observation...

This is a 3 image focus stack and there are 3 separate trees shown here.

Heh, I actually thought about saying something, since I was standing right next to you, but I thought I'd keep your secret until you came clean.

It's a gorgeous image, and I like that you eliminated the white line in the repost.

Great work, as usual, sir!

--P

Cool, I had not noticed that I was looking at three images, but now that I know, it makes sense. Repo is spot on!

Lon: Really enjoying your new work in general and this one especially. Fabulous textures and I love the color palette. The repost makes an already good image exceptional IMO. >=))>

Thanks again everyone for your comments and observations.

Although I doubt many will see this now, but I did want to make an important clarification.

While technically this is a composite, it's not a composite of 3 different tree images.  It's a focus stack of the SAME image, exposed 3 times at different focus points.  One for each tree.

I don't know if anyone was thinking that, but I just want to clarify if they did.

tx

Lon this one is not working for me.  Not sure why but its just not appealing to me.  Maybe its the horizontal format?