Autumn Gold

[BrianA61]

Was out at my favorite duck hunting area yesterday and was on my way home and saw this scene when I passed an opening in the trees. I saw the sun backlighting this row of trees and the photographer in me kicked in. I stopped my truck, backed up and got out. By that time the sun was going behind the clouds. I managed only 2 shots. This was taken with my new (to me) Canon G9 P&S. Some PP brought out the colors that I saw, but, I still don't think it's quite right. Can't really put my finger on it but would appreciate some insight.

[selig1656]

Lovely capture , gotta love what mother nature paints for us .

[mugge]

Brian, clone the twigs top right corner, they don't do anything for the picture.
Cheers Ole

[Shadowman]

Nice capture.

[Sam W]

I like it. One thing that makes it interesting to me is the small group of trees in the distant on the left side.

[Wavelength]

O, really Gold!!!

[Geoff F]

I agree about the top right corner needing cloning.

Is there too much foreground if the trees and clouds are the main subject?

[bnnrcn]

Lovely colors ! I agree about cloning the twigs.

[IzzieK]

OK...so I agree about cloning the twigs but I also want a little bit more emphasis on the clouds...

[Manfred M]

Brian - It's a great image. You say feel something is not quite right though.

A few things strike me as being the possible issue include:

1. The image is quite soft, so a bit of sharpening might help;

2. If the trees were back-lit, then the sun must have been fairly low. The histogram looks good (the white point could move a tiny bit, but not more), but I find the image just looks a bit too bright so turning down the brightness might help; and

3. If the sun was low, then the white balance might be off a bit, so looking at warmer tones by moving them out a bit might;

4. Try upping the contrast a touch. Back lit leaves against the branches might give you a scene that has a bit more contrast than this image; and

5. My "cure-all" for scenes like this is to add a tiny, barely noticeable vignette to push the viewer's eyes into the centre of the image.

[BrianA61]

Brian - It's a great image. You say feel something is not quite right though.

A few things strike me as being the possible issue include:

1. The image is quite soft, so a bit of sharpening might help;

2. If the trees were back-lit, then the sun must have been fairly low. The histogram looks good (the white point could move a tiny bit, but not more), but I find the image just looks a bit too bright so turning down the brightness might help; and

3. If the sun was low, then the white balance might be off a bit, so looking at warmer tones by moving them out a bit might;

4. Try upping the contrast a touch. Back lit leaves against the branches might give you a scene that has a bit more contrast than this image; and

5. My "cure-all" for scenes like this is to add a tiny, barely noticeable vignette to push the viewer's eyes into the centre of the image.

Thanks for the tips, Manfred (and the rest). Some of the things I did in PP were to use a graduated filter to darken the clouds, add some overall contrast, clarity and a little yellow/orange saturation. There is a slight vignette I added but maybe needs to be a little darker to focus more on the center. I will go back and clone out the tree branches in the top right corner and add some more sharpening and/or contrast and see if that does it. If I had been standing there just a few seconds earlier, I don't think there would've been an issue with what I was wanting out of the image. The clouds were moving in quite fast and the sun was quickly being filtered out by those dark looking clouds. I'll repost when I get a chance to work on the image again.

[BrianA61]

Well, I've finally had time to work on the image a bit more based on the comments from Manfred. I cropped a bit more to remove some of the foreground and cloned out the tree branches in the upper right. I find it more appealing than the original and more of what I saw through my lens. C&C is welcome as always.

[IzzieK]

Brian...looking better here....

[Geoff F]

Yes, much better.

[bnnrcn]

Better