Big tooth maple

[Chris Ober]

Big tooth maple leaf on moss/lichen cover granite. Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. It's also called Lost Maple or Canyon Maple because it's pretty scattered about with little pockets from Montana to Mexico. Often found in the sheltered canyons. Lost Maples state park in Texas is named after these.

30D
70-200mm f/4 @ 118 mm f/22
.6 sec

It took a bit of a hit from having to save the Jpeg at 27 quality to pass the file size limit.

[Brendan Dozier]

Nice image & composition, Chris. The shape of the leaf and it's reddish color contrast well with the color and texture of the moss and lichen. Wish we could see it at 100% IQ. The leaf seems a little blurred which may be from IQ reduction or just slightly OOF.

[Mitch Haimov]

Nice combination of colors and textures, interesting leaf. I would have been tempted to move the leaf closer to LL corner and "groom" the setting by removing fallen brown needles before making the exposure, as well as to darken the lichen in UR corner a little during PP.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Chris. I would agree with you that your image quality suffered a little from having to save it at such a low setting - wish we could see the pre-saved version. :S3: I like the diagonal positioning of the leaf and it stands out well against the green. To my eye, the image has a slight blueish cast - you could try warming up the color balance a bit to see if you like that better. The light colored lichen in the URC, mentioned by Mitch, wants to draw my eye. You might consider cropping from the right to remove it - and then maybe a little off the left to keep the leaf from being too centered. Good to see you back in Macro again - hope to see more from you. :S3:

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Chris,
Nice to see you in here! Good advice above on both the lichen and "grooming" of the BG. I often spend more time doing that than actually taking the image! It really helps in the final presentation. I do think Steve's crop suggestion will help a lot.....I would add a touch off the bottom too. Yes it clips the curve of the moss.....but not that important IMO and would make the diagonal comp even stronger. Minor tweaks to a nice presentation!

[Chris Ober]

Thanks all! I agree about the clean up stuff but it didn't bother me too much in this one.

Something like this?