C&C Needed - Monochrome Birch Trees

[FlyingSquirrel]

This is an image of some birch trees in late evening. The setting sunlight was striking the birch tree trunks and branches, while not illuminating the background trees too much, which made the subject stand out. I'd been shooting my 400mm hand held for birds, but when I saw this scene, I had to capture it. Thankfully, my shooting buddy at the time had a tripod which I borrowed for this shot.

This shot has been sitting in lightroom for many months. I've been thinking about it for quite a while, occasionally peeking at it and messing with some LR tweaks. Finally I have got down to editing it for real. There were a few challenges I was up against: Adding small, medium, and large scale contrast to the image, but without making it look "overdone." So much detail everywhere can get overly busy, distracting, and can easily look overdone and oversharpened in a hurry. Also, choosing what tones and details to bring out and which to darken or subdue. And, some of the brightest highlights were at the verge of being clipped (I was able to recover them in LR from RAW), so maintaining the detail in those bright areas while still getting the result in the rest of the photo was challenging.

I found that it was easy to have the image look flat and bland, so I ended up adding some various contrast enhancements by a few methods, but it was easily overdone as well. I've made a few versions of the image with different areas brighter, darker, different detail enhancements, and so forth. The differences are actually quite subtle. I've been looking at this and editing it so much that I've basically become blind to it; it's difficult to really see what I'm looking at now. Somehow I feel like something may be missing, but I'm not sure. The tree bark is perhaps too gray? But the issue is, when I brighten it, suddenly everything looks overexposed and too contrasty (even if the bark technically is not blown).

What I'm looking for is C&C on the processing and handling of the image (not the composition or subject matter). I'd like to know which version you prefer, and why. I'm open to hearing suggestions on alternate processing or other ideas, but please do not edit the photo yourself (you'd need the raw file anyway).

Thanks for any feedback, suggestions, etc.

1 (my v2)



2 (my v3)




3 (my v4)



4 (my v5)



Edit: more, different versions of the image are posted later in the thread

[FootLoose]

Prefer the 4th, Matt. Both 3 and 4 seem to me to have a similar amount of contrast between the trees and the background in the upper part of the frame (although I wonder if you could do a bit more there), but 4 is slightly darker in the lower 3rd of the frame and I think that helps draw attention to the main branches above. Also the grass in the foreground / bottom of frame is too bright in 3 and is a bit distracting.

[NorthernFocus]

No.3 for me, Matt. Best separation from the BG and best detail. I can best see the black markings in the bark characteristic of birch.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Thanks guys, much appreciated! Aside from the versions shown here, do you think I could anything else? Could you see more contrast being ok, or do you think it's at the limit? Should I push the shadows behind the tree darker? Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

[Mike Buckley]

No.3 for me, Matt. Best separation from the BG and best detail.

Ditto for me. I think you can make bring out more of the black tones to increase that separation.

Aside from all of that, why were you shooting at ISO 800 instead of your camera's base ISO?

[FlyingSquirrel]

Ditto for me. I think you can make bring out more of the black tones to increase that separation.

Aside from all of that, why were you shooting at ISO 800 instead of your camera's base ISO?

Mike, thanks for the feedback. Answer to your question regarding ISO:

- It was late so not a lot of light to work with
- I was standing on a floating wood dock
- There were vibrations on the dock from people and wind
- The borrowed tripod was not very sturdy
- I was using a 400mm lens on a crop sensor body
- I stopped down my aperture a bit for more DOF
- Oh, I was also playing one of my favorite games: "press the shutter button, wait for the 10 second timer to countdown, and hope when the shutter is opened there is not any vibrations or wind"

Even at ISO 800, the shutter speed was only 1/160. I would have preferred a much faster speed given the conditions, but I didn't want to go any higher with the ISO. The image at 100% is not as sharp as I would like, but I like it too much to throw it away.

Based on everyone's feedback, I have done two more versions of the image, each successively darker in the shadows and blacks. I also slightly burned the grass at the lower edge of the image. I like these darker versions, but wonder if they have too much contrast. That sounds silly coming from me, since I like high contrast b&w images (recall, my seashell series).

5 (v6)


6 (v7)

[Mike Buckley]

6 (v7) really takes the image to a much higher level for me. Exceptionally well done!

Oh, I was also playing one of my favorite games: "press the shutter button, wait for the 10 second timer to countdown, and hope when the shutter is opened there is not any vibrations or wind"

All of your reasons were very understandable but that reason is the most entertaining. In the future, there is no need to post the others.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Mike, thanks for the feedback. As I have been far less active on the forums than I used to be, I have missed your witty humor! Good to see you still got it