Theme - Small in the Frame

[Cheryl Slechta]

Another image from Bosque del Apache in November. It snowed and since I'm from Florida I kept shooting things that people up north see every day during the winter.
This is a cottonwood leaf.:S3:

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Cheryl I like the high key and the cottonwoods for center stage. I felt there were a lot of elements going on and cloned a few out and cropped slightly from right and left. I hope you don't mind a repost. As always it can be a take it or leave parts in kind of thing.

[Dennis Bishop]

My immediate reaction upon viewing this was, "Snow in Florida???" I really like the brown and white together and the composition. I like Jackie's take on it, too. Cleaning up the left side makes a difference, but even though I like those long wispy strands of grass on the left (and would like to see them transplanted, if possible), getting rid of them left a very effective triangle.

[Paul Lagasi]

Cheryl, very nice composition, would make a cool print...only thing I might do is remove the OOF leaf in the background....but again just my opinion

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Cheryl,

Greetings. I think the color is the main focus for me, so Diane's removal of some of the elements works for me. I would be interested in seeing this a little cooler in wb. Maybe this was taken during the golden hour but the snow slightly tilted toward red/yellow... (though the image is not color managed so ?. What I'm seeing may be artifact.).

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Diane Miller]

It wasn't me this time.. :w3 I just got here. But I do like the cleanup -- especially the longer stalks removed. Very lovely image -- I like the subtle detail in the leaves.

The image doesn't have an embedded profile -- check out my sticky tutorial on seeing colors correctly on the web. BUT, when I open it in PS and see that there is no profile (because I have PS set up to warn me in Edit > Color Settings), if I tell it to Assign sRGB, the color is unchanged from what my color-managed web browser shows. Some other people won't have that same setup and will not see the colors correctly. Exporting from LR will embed the profile you chose to convert to. In Save for Web in PS, check the box to embed it.

[Randall Farhy]

Cheryl, I really like the subject and how you've presented it. Jackie's version cleans it up nicely in the landscape orientation. Here I tried vertical and applied the lightroom5 "Old Polar" preset, then altered white balance by -11 temp toward blue) and -9 tint (toward green) for a high key color effect. Scrolling through the different presets offered many versions that work well, attesting to the strength of the original concept.

[Diane Miller]

Indeed! A wonderful subject you found! I like the texture Randall brought out.

I think I'd go with your original crop on the left, and leave more of the stuff in the snow, to make a path back to the OOF leaf and give more of a feeling of the surfact of the snow. Maybe remove the biggest blob, but crop on the right to get rid of the taller grasses in the UR.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Thanks, everyone for your comments and taking the time to tweak the image. I was conflicted about the grasses in the ULC and although I still can't articulate why I do like them. I really like what Randall did with Old Polar and the vertical and I like Jackie's RP as well. Lots of ways to go with it - I think maybe a combination of all 3 - leave the blobby stuff, use Old Polar and eliminate (sigh) the long grasses:S3: