Light through the fall colors

[Hazel Grant]

Visiting a friend's house today. She lives in a wooded area. Appreciated the light flow through the trees. had only my compact Nikon Coolpix S9300 with me, so mostly automatic. 1/160, f3.5, iso 125 PP included a slight crop to vertical and to cut out her gas tank. Slight color adjust and posterizing the edges. Should the lighted areas be brighter for contrast and to show the flow?

[Nancy Bell]

Very nice flow of the diagonal elements with the vertical elements of the tree trunks. I see a nice glow on the reddish leaves of the largest tree that could be emphasized. If you go brighter overall, maybe make the trunks darker. Actually I think you could go lots of directions with such a nice base image. If you do play with this, be sure to post it!

[Sandy Witvoet]

Lovely image of late Fall here in the midwest! A bit more "streaming light" would be FAB!

[Diane Miller]

My kind of place! I'm going to be a tree in my next life.

I like that the leaves at the top are showing some blue, contrasting so nicely with the gold and brown. I wouldn't go lighter / brighter with the light tones. Might even try to subdue them a little, but that may look too flat. You've caught a typical kind of forest light here, and light is hard to change.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Hazel,

Greetings. I like the impact of the bright light against the central yellow leaves. But I think it over powers the midtone reds in the upper and lower parts of the image. I would be inclined to pull up the midtones (curves) a fair amount and re-add the dark contrast with posterization (not just the edges). Then saturate for brilliant fall colors ;-) ...

An idea.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Hazel Grant]

Worked on this some more. Lightened the "light" stream. desat on most of it to give it more of a weathered look. Used Diane's great idea about stretching the lower right corner to remove a large butane tank. In the original, I had cropped out the house on the left. Kept it in for this repost. Opinion on what to do on this? Thanks