A Lonely Tree

[Yan Zhang]

The tree is in my campus, and I have taken countless pictures of it in the last two years in all seasons. But the best time of taking picture of it is in winter because its all leaves fall off.

In this Thursday late afternoon, it looked like to rain shortly. I came to see this lonely tree again, expected to get the last light before the sun went down. The sky was quite dark, and the sun was behind the clouds. I waited for about 20 min, finally, the sun broke the clouds and a beam of light was just on this tree. It was a great moment to see the tree showed her beautiful golden color, though it only lasted couple of minutes. It rained in the evening eventually.

I feel I have captured the scene I saw, but not sure what other people think about this picture.

Thanks for your comments.

Yan

[Colin Southern]

Hi Yan,

It works and it works well. One of your best, for sure

I've given it the Photoshop 30 Second Makeover (TM!) - what do you think?

- Cropped off some dead space at the top

- Increased saturation on the blues & cyans in the sky

- Upped the levels by reducing the highlight clipping point

- Burn (shadows) of tree branches to improve local contrast

- Sharpen to improve punch

- Frame etc

PS: You'll be holding your own exhibition soon!

[Yan Zhang]

Colin,

Thanks so much for your comments and polish of the image. Your version looks so good, I realised that the extra dead space indeed should be eliminated. I feel my Photoshop skill is too limited, and each time I saw your version then I kept thinking how good if I could do this someday:-).

Thanks again.