Critique please: first attempt at "Impressionistic" photography

This is my first attempt at creating this effect. It's a tree next to my house, the main effect is completely achieved in camera. The only editing in LR/PS is to adjust things like exposure, sharpness etc.

Looking forward to honest critique - please be brutal if needed


#1

I like the concepts and think you delivered well in terms of textures. I personally think the colors are a bit too rich but that's my personal taste.

looks better with tighter crop IMHO, I like #2 much better...

Hey, this is cool! How did you do this?

Thanks all for comments and feedback!

emily, it involved relatively longer exposure (about 4 sec) then manually tilting the camera to get that blurry feel. Needs a lot of experiment and the same setting may not always work. As a disclaimer, I am completely new to this and still improvising, so there would definitely be better ways to do it

i have seen this impressionist style effect before in the luminous Landscape i have also tried it
and not done well but you my friend have IMO nailed it...

I like the first one, but if I had my way, I would have gone for a longer shutter speed (I like to use the bulb setting, and just go by feel till I get it right) and tried to get a crisper image before the blur. I guess you weren't using a tripod, which would make that pretty tough. Aslo, I don't know what kind of lens you were using, but if you aren't using a prime, try zooming in and out while the shutter is open, sometimes you can get some cool looking pics from that.

I'm going to try this, definitely. Such neat patterns!

rraman wrote in post #8897970
Thanks all for comments and feedback!

emily, it involved relatively longer exposure (about 4 sec) then manually tilting the camera to get that blurry feel. Needs a lot of experiment and the same setting may not always work. As a disclaimer, I am completely new to this and still improvising, so there would definitely be better ways to do it

Thanks a lot rooeey and drDusk.

emily, it sure is quite interesting, I too need to keep trying - can take a lot of patience and luck

looks like your colors are way off, try the same effect with your camera on a tripod, plus 4 nd filter try to get about 2 to 4 second exposure then expose accordinally and slowly pan the camera up and down vertically on the tripod. Another technique is also useing a tripod, get your scene in focus take one picture, then take one of same scene slightly out of focus and combine them in photoshop. This is called a digital slide sandwich.

PS- Tony Sweet a good friend of mine taught me alot. He has a book on this you wont regret buying if you decide to do so.

Fine Art Digital Nature Photography

http://www.tonysweet.c​om/page_store.html