Aspen On The Rocks

[Chris Starbuck]

Canon EOS 3, Tamron 28-300, Velvia 100, 3.2 sec @ f/16, tripod; overcast & drizzling
PP in PS CS4: removed color cast from scanner, tweaked contrast, sharpened

Made this image a few years ago in the western upper peninsula of Michigan, somewhere downstream from Bonanza Falls.

C & C welcome!

[Robert Amoruso]

Nice composition on this one Chris. Your larger rocks surrounding the leave help to contain and frame it. Though it looks good as presented w/o a lot of detail in the rocks, I downloaded it and did a PSCS Shadow/Highlight found a ton of detail in them in case you have not tried that yet.

[Julie Kenward]

I like it! The composition is very nice and the textures and colors of the rocks set off the leaf's softer side quite nicely. Even better - you have it highly sharpened so everything is crisp and distinct making those textures show up even more.

[Chris Starbuck]

Thanks for the compliments! Glad you like it.
Robert, I guess I'd got used to the image being kind of dark; hadn't even tried lightening the shadows; I'm surprised at what you found. Here's a bit lighter version.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Chris,
As others mentioned above........very nice on the comp. I like the shadows lightened with more detail in the rocks.......but maybe a hair more contrast back in......as even the leaf lost a bit of the pop. One other thought if you are not against such things........cloning out/patch tooling the whitish rocks.........not the one near the leaf.......but the smaller pebbles above......should be the final touch to a very nice comp.
PS My aspen leaves are smoother.........r u sure this is an aspen?

[Chris Starbuck]

Roman,
I'll take another shot at the contrast, and see what I can do with those too-bright rocks.


PS My aspen leaves are smoother.........r u sure this is an aspen?

No. Birch, maybe? Whatever white-barked tree is common in Michigan's western UP. Is there a resident botanist on BPN?

Thanks for the helpful comments.

[Chris Starbuck]

Burned the very light rocks above & to the right of the leaf, increased overall contrast, and increased contrast further on just the leaf. The selective adjustment tool on the curves panel in CS4 was real handy for that last - it let me brighten the yellow and darken the orange by click-dragging on the leaf without having to figure out (guess at) the exact tonalities. (I used a layer mask, too, to limit the effect to just the leaf.)

[Julie Kenward]

The final repost is even better than the original. Nice work, Chris!

[Chris Starbuck]

Thanks, Jules! This is why I always leave all my layers intact in my PS master files, no matter how bloated they become. I can come back 4 years later, after I've learned a bunch more (with lots of help from everybody here), and dramatically improve an image.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Beautiful image Chris. Those small pebbles amongst the larger ones provide just the apt BG & texture for this beautiful leaf on top. Lovely details. I liked ur final re-post a lot.