Quiver Tree silhouette

[Mark Wiseman]

This is one of my favourite images from my recent trip to the Hantam region of South Africa. I like the colours of the clouds and the layering affect they bring to the image.
Camera details:
Nikon D800
Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 G AF/S ED lens
S/S: 1/50
Aperture: f14
ISO: 100
Manual exposure and focusing.
Image taken at 70mm focal length.
Manfrotto tripod and FOBA mini superball head
Remote nikon shutter release
Image processed in ACR and CS5 on a 15"MBP.
Any comments and crits welcome.
:cheers:

[Morkel Erasmus]

I like the mood here Mark, and I get what you were trying to do here, but the silhouettes are too jumbled up for me to have the impact it could have had.
I fully realise that this is tricky and in a place like this with many of these distinct shapes overlapping it might be near-impossible. The key to a good silhoutte for me is distinguishability and simplicity. Even if you had just been able to isolate the leftmost (most prominent) tree a bit more from the one that it's overlapping with at the bottom RHS (as viewed) of the tree, the impact would have been greater.

I do like the shot - I just think it could have been a bit better if you repositioned yourself? That being said I have no idea what your constraints were. Perhaps if you'd moved drastically to the left (as you would want to include the best part of the sky which is middle-and-right of the frame as seen) and tried to shoot something that shows better separation between the 3 prominent trees on the LHS?

this all is just IMHO of course :e3

[Rachel Hollander]

Mark - love the sky and the colors. I do understand what Morkel is saying about the silhouettes intersecting and agree that if possible to have them separate would have been preferable.

TFS,
Rachel