Foggy Pines +rp

Beautiful, Lon! My kind of image, too. Very mysterious and fine mood. To my twisted mind, it could use a little CCW rotation? No other suggestions. Love this one. 

Beautiful mood created with the fog - I do love fog!  Hide and Seek for a title, describes the experience but...  Maybe a slight sharpening around the pines in the large view, but maybe the slight softness is due to the fog and should stay as it.  Well seen and captured.

Absolutely lovely, Lon.  I like the choice of B&W but would be interested to see a color version too.  The gentle diagonal is wonderful.  I also like how this is the reverse of most images where vignetting darkens the outer edge and the center is brighter.  here the center is darker due to the higher density of trees there than the outer edges and it works perfectly.  It's obvious you took great care in cropping this as well.  All in all, one of the most impactful and sensitive images I've viewed in a while - outstanding work, my friend.

Thanks for the comments so far.  Man, you guys are good.  I hadn't noticed Harley, but now I see the rotation.  Of course trees don't always grow straight vertical, but it seems that the majority here are leaning in one direction... Good eye!

Harry, you're also right, this is a bit soft.  Looking at my data I see this was taken at f/16 @1/15s and 210mm.... add moving fog, distance to the trees and yup, a bit soft.  I believe I ran thru Nik's presharpener, but often times you end up sharpening noise and pixels...

And Bill, surprisingly, this is full frame, no crop what so ever.  Of course a 28-300mm zoom lets me crop in camera... ;-)  I did some minor cloning along the bottom edge, but no crop.  I've taken a look and tried to process this in color.  Not quite what I would hope. Color version actually shows really how many dead trees there are in the frame.  It's a sad state of affairs in Yosemite and elsewhere as a result of the bark beetle. Color version a bit more real, b&w a bit more artistic. IMHO.

Thanks folks!

 

Really nice photo art Lon!  Meaning vey artistic.  I totally enjoy this type of image.  The mood is excellent and I love your comp.  Well done!

Love this. I actually kinda like the slight tilted look. My only small nit and it's extremely nit-picky, is that if you were to print this large, I would clone out the two tiny tree tops intruding from the center bottom. 

Lon, there is a wonderful subtlety to your image, that I really enjoy.To my eye the b&w conversion is spot on.

At first sight I also thought the trees should be upright to stabilize the composition which shows a strong diagonal without a counteracting element. But than I recognized a small group of trees in the lower right corner that are indeed vertical. So I think your camera position was actually level. A simple rotation would make them leaning to the left and maybe this could make for some irritation. If it was mine, I would try to apply a kind of perspective correction mainly for the group of trees at the left in order to anchor the image.

Anyway, the image conveys the specific atmosphere immediately to me, thanks for sharing.

Peter

Lovely, graphic quality to this, Lon.  The trees seem like accents in some natural calligraphy - and b&w is indeed absolutely right.  The question of the title pales before the quality of the image.

Sweet stuff here, Lon. The atmospherics with the rolling fog swirling among the pines is nothing short of outstanding. This also has a nice diagonal flow to it. Sounds like Yosemite has the same problem with hoards of people that Acadia does.  Anyway, this is well worth having to deal with to many people.

Ed

I think this is exceptional, Lon.  Choke full of mood and technically perfect to my eye.  I love these types of images and I wish this one was in my portfolio.  No nits from me, love it.  

I like this image too.  I especially like the placement of the bottom left tree.  I would suggest trying the image with more contrast in the treed areas but that might just be my taste.  Worth a try to see what it looks like.  Good job.

Thank you much for the comments and suggestions.  I wasn't going to repost, but I've incorporated most all the suggestions, I think, and this is the result.

I hadn't considered the slight leaning of the trees. but saw it after the comments.  I took Peter's suggestion and actually did a skew transform where I was able to affect just the trees on the left, where it was most notable, and left the right half as original.  Because of the skew, I ended up adding back in some canvas because that top corner got a little tight.

I also cloned out the two tree tops at the bottom.  I had thought about that, but had already cloned out one that was more obvious... ;-)  Next, I slightly brightened and added a little contrast in the trees with a Levels layer.  Now I didn't want to add contrast globally, so I painted out 50% on the left hand trees and about 20% diagonally thru the center.  So an increase in contrast, but a bit selective. It's also slightly brighter, but I didn't want to lose the softness and mystery of the fog. 

Hopefully the changes are subtle enough that I didn't lose anyone, but enough to incorporate the suggestions. I hope this is a good balance. As always, feedback like this is invaluable.  I for one appreciate being able to improve our images, even if just a little bit.

Thank you!

The repost is significantly better IMO. I liked it more right away but wasn't sure why. I think it's mostly due to the selective contrast added. Given the overall softness of the image it's nice to see something sharp rising above it to get your attention. 
 

Lon, This is absolutely wonderful. I love fog and this shows what it does at it's best. Great composition and I just love the feel / mood it has. The repost is even better although I liked the original. The suggestions did make it better and you applied them beautifully. Fantastic image and work.

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI.

Repost looks great!

Lon, b&w was the perfect choice for this. The somewhat high-key tones and the dark pines work very nicely. Nice job on the processing. I like this a lot! The repost is great!
--P

Lon, Came back for another look...just love this image!  Nick

The way the trees seem to be aligned diagonally by the way the fog falls makes this special.