Pine tree bark and needles abstract. C&C

[FlyingSquirrel]

Please let me know what you think. Feel free to comment on anything, though in particular I'm interested in opinions/advice on 1. composition, and 2. Exposure, contrast, sharpness

edit: i made this 1000px tall, but I think it might be too tall for some monitors unless you are viewing your browser in full screen mode. Looks like the lightbox resizes it smaller otherwise, so it might have moire or weird jaggies. Let me know if I should make it 800px tall instead.

Thanks

[Mike Buckley]

It's a great concept worth continuing to explore. Maybe sharpening only the needles would help separate them from the bark. Also perhaps use less contrast on the bark. In other words, the busy background provided by the bark is a little distracting to me.

I'm not seeing any moire effect in either size. The large size that you posted works fine on my monitor, which has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, even without using F11 to display it in full view. I don't know how common that resolution is these days.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Mike,

Thanks for the reply. I was also thinking the bark was too busy, but it seemed too flat if I didn't do much to it. I'll give it another whirl and try to do something in between, to get some detail and depth to the bark but have it take a backseat to the needles. I like your idea of just sharpening the needles, or at least I'll tone down the sharpening of the bark and crank up the needles. Will post a new version in the near future when I can find some editing time. Thanks again!

[Stagecoach]

Matt,

Exposure, contrast and sharpness fine to me. I like the texture of the bark and contrasting smooth pine needles but not sure if they work well together in this composition. To me it seems a bit 'flat' and Im not sure where to focus my attention.

One possibility may be to take a side on view making the pine needles more dominant.

Grahame