Critique - The Wooded Path

I would love to get honest feedback on this photo. What did I do wrong? What did I do right? What could I have done differently to make the photo pop?

IMAGE LINK: http://potn.kwsanders.​com/wooded_path_large.​jpg

As an interesting exercise in perspective, it's a nice shot. The subject is obviously the elevated wooden walkway through the woods, the camera was held level, the exposure is close and the color balance looks correct.

However, is it exciting enough to make it onto a calendar? That's very subjective, and you will get everything from warm to frigid on that question.

I think the composition is in question in that it is too centered (static), both horizontally and vertically.

If you look at a histogram of the image, you will also see that the highlights have been blown out in a significant portion and that the blacks have lost detail in a significant portion (both margins of the histogram have pixels stacked up). So, there is also a problem with the High
Dynamic Range (HDR) of the scene. To correct that you must find a way to reduce the overall contrast of the scene or use one of the techniques for accommodating HDR scenes into the limited dynamic range of our camers, such as the PSCS2 Merge to HDR tool.

To reduce the dynamic range of the light that is in this scene (very bright sky, dark trees) a gradient filter can be used. It will stop down the sky but not the bottom of your shot. My guess is that you will need to stop the sky down by 2 stops wrt the bottom portion of the picture.
Also in positioning the camera make sure to have the sun behind a tree wrt to the lens opening. This will prevent lens flare as seen on the right. Anyway use a lens hood.
You can also try to saturate the colors a bit more.

All of the above, but I'm not sure you chose the best part of that path. I'd bet that there were some pretty large Cypress trees somewhere on down that would have made it more interesting than those smaller trees.

Then when it comes to photographing BIG trees, it always helps to have a person in the pic, and never stand them out in front for the shot. That will only shrink the tree. Try to locate them half way back, to one side, for the best honest representation. of slightly aft to make the tree seem larger.

I agree with Keith above regarding something in the scene to give a perspective on size. Whether it is a person, dog, etc on the bridge would help. Possibly shooting this in portrait mode would narrow the scene to lead one down the path more.

It would be interesting to see if the op has improved on this with 8 years to work on the shot.

CameraMan wrote in post #17501947
It would be interesting to see if the op has improved on this with 8 years to work on the shot.

That was good.

Hopefully so.

I didn't even notice that.

Thanks for the recent comments everyone. Just to note... that photo was taken over 8 years ago when I was learning how to use my first DSLR. But, it never hurts to hear helpful critique and suggestions. I appreciate it.

By the way, in that 8+ years, my wife has had two more kids, she is now a stay-at-home-mom, and I have been so busy that I have not made time to do much shooting. It is time for that to change now that my wife bought me a 60D for an early 20th anniversary gift. That's one reason I started visiting these forums again daily for the first time in about 6 years or so.

Gart wrote in post #17501940
I agree with Keith above regarding something in the scene to give a perspective on size. Whether it is a person, dog, etc on the bridge would help. Possibly shooting this in portrait mode would narrow the scene to lead one down the path more.

That one was shot in portrait mode, but it is cropped, which I have learned to do a lot less of in the years since that shot was taken.

Congrats on the kids and the 60D. And welcome back. Btw, I loved that location. That would be a beautiful spot for portraits.