Augrabies Treeline

[Morkel Erasmus]

I revisited some of my photos from our trip to Namibia and the Northern Cape in May 2009.

This shot was taken in the Augrabies Falls National Park in South Africa. I liked the emphasis here on the one dead tree and one living tree, and of course the sweet morning light, the textures of grass, rock and cloud and the colour.

3-image HDR, shot from car window and processed in Photomatix and CS3.

Techs:
Canon 1000D with Tamron 70-300mm Di Tele-Macro @ 176mm
f16 @ 1/250 SS @ ISO-200

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Morkel, I like the concept but it would have worked better if the placement in the frame was different. Right now, the dead tree is distracting from the live one...esp. because there is nothing to balance it on the right side. I would prefer a more symmetric placement. One more suggestion is to do somethibg about the noise in the sky. Looks like an awesome place and good job with the HDR. It does not seem like its done. Congrats.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks Kaustubh - I left some graininess in the sky because I tend to overdo noise reduction in the skies of my images, making them appear too smooth. I hear what you're saying about balancing the comp but this was how I took it in the field so I'll have to live with it until I get there again :)

[Dave Mills]

Hi Morkel, The lighting in your image is beautiful. I didn't care for placement of the trees and felt it better compositionally to concentrate on one. That caused me to crop the image significantly. Others might give their opinions on the crop whether more foreground is needed or more or less sky...

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Morkel, I agree with the others regarding the composition. I do love those threatening skies though, especially in combination with that lovely light. I feel they are a bit lost in the tight crop Dave presents.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks Dave & Jerry for your inputs...

here's a different crop to keep the strong elements.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Morkel, the crop looks good....

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Morkel,
You didn't think I'd leave this one alone did you? While I agree with the above assesments and I like your re-post.....wanted to give you more options.....took the FG and trees with a bit of the sky (sloppy lasso) and knocked down the brightness a touch. I did pull back on the yellow saturation on the center tree trunk. Pulled back aggresively on the blue saturation and then chose most of the sky.....a levels adjustment to bring up the subtle details (very similar to what I did in previous post) and then a bit of B/C......noise reduction on sky.
Ooooh...almost forgot...1 degree CCW rotation just so when I croped.....i got rid of some of the darker shadow/black areas at bottom of frame.
Let me know what you think.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Looking at it now....I like the OP sky.....just noise reduction!

[Robert Amoruso]

When I first saw this I saw the crop I posted here. I know some don't like square crops and if I was creating it I would have more room left and right sides but what I like the the contrast of the trees, one still with branches and leaves and the other a skeleton. Great sky.

[Danny J Brown]

Hi Morkel: I liked your final repost the best. Reminds me of a shot I just saw in OP. Great job.

[Morkel Erasmus]

thanks for all the great feedback and suggestions!

Robert - I quite like your idea and will work with that on the original...