Autum forest-scape

[msol]

Two pictures that try to grab the mood of the autumn forests.

Both were taken with my G3 in RAW mode. When converting the RAW, I've put the white balance on Shade in order to increase the warmth of the picture. Then I increased saturation of the yellows only and cropped to get a bit of a panorama view. Finally, I blended the result with a gaussian blur of itself (blend mode "soft light", opacity of blurred version around 30%.)

What do you think? Which one do you like best? Any comments, thought, etc. are appreciated.

http://images.fotopic.net/?iid=y53myq&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

http://images.fotopic.net/?iid=y53myr&outx=600&noresize=1&nostamp=1

[Elbee19]

Of the two I like the second one best. I don't have the capacity to mess around with pictures captured in RAW but you seem to have created some really nice photos. Question...how long did you leave the shutter open to capture those shots?

[msol]

Personally I also preferred the second. I don't know the precise shutter times. They were not extremely long, but too long to shoot from the hand. (I guess 1/10th or so) Since I didn't carry my tripod, I used trees to rest the camera against.

[msol]

Question on the second photo:
What do you think: The two trees on the left and right that are only partly visible, are they disturbing border elements or are they nicely framing the picture?

[Scottes]

Both shots look a little weird to me. Too oversaturated for my tastes perhaps, or my the yellow is just too much. And the trees are less framing and more intrusion, IMHO. One step back or forward might have been better, leaving the trees either completely in or completely out of the scene.

All the grumbling done, I like the second one a lot. The scene is great, there's enough to capture your eyes yet not too much to overload. The swatches of colors are very nice (besides above). My eye is led from the pond straight up through the center of the trees, but it's not slammed into the frame but rather a spread of leaves. That works well I think.

[smudge]

I agree with Scott. The trees in two are intrusive.
The first is dominated by the overbright clearing left of center which is too distracting to allow your eyes to settle.

As a whole though, I like two.

[msol]

Scottes,
your yellow is OK. I did indeed saturate the yellows (see initial post). Combined with the "shadows" white balance setting, that is perhaps overdone. I wanted to make the autumn colors pop, so I experimented, and probably have overdone it. Color-correctness always remains difficult for me. Also, sometimes I believe that changing the colors may better express the mood. Taking this impressionistic view I doubt whether my yellows are too much. But let's not argue taste. I will experiment some more with various saturation levels to see what happens.

Scottes, smudge,
I'll experiment with removing the two trees. Cropping probably.

Smudge,
You're absolutely right about the overbright pond on the left. The more I see the picture, the less I like it and the more I wonder why I've put it up here. I do remember why I took the shot. The yellow leaves in the top center (you also see them reflected in the pond) where catching light beautifully as if they were shining. I tried to capture that, but alas...

[tofuboy]

I really like number 2. As was mentioned, the bright spot in number 1 is distracting. At first, I didn't notice the trees at the edges in number 2, as I was captivated by the interesting landscape the the colors. On my laptop monitory, the colors seem fine to me :)

[Molydood]

the reasons I like #2

It seems to have a nicer balance of light and shade than #1
The shade in the foreground works well to frame the picture, and also leads your eye into the picture
the pond provides a nice focus point for the image, and also takes your eye further into the picture
I like the bands of colour (red in centre, and yellow at top)
I like the colours

I'm sure there are other reasons why the shot works, but these are just thoughts of the top of my head :-)
nice picture
Martin