Red River

[Julie Kenward]

Okay, so really it's a pond but I needed a snappy title, right? I took this image yesterday while frequenting a small park near my home. There were several sugar maple trees right next to the pond's edge and I waited patiently for them to shine down on the water. I was rewarded with this one image of a dead leaf floating through the colorful mess.

Canon 40D, 400mm f/5.6 (I was there to shoot birds in the crab apple trees)
f6.3 @ 1/400th, ISO 400
Manual mode, evaluative metering, natural light
Added contrast and a boost of vibrance in CS5 and an increase in tonal contrast in Color Efex Pro 4.

[Chris Korman]

Interesting textures in the water ripples and the colors are very nice, however there is not enough separation between the water and the leaf because the colorings are so similar. I might try to remove the saturation adjustment and work with curves for contrast and color.

[Allen Sparks]

Hi Julie, very cool water patterns and a neat overal image. I agree with toning down the water colors some as this pops a little too much for my taste and may help separate the leaf.

Allen

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jules. I think the red sensors in my eyes are being overloaded! :bg3: Great job of using the reflections in the water to set up your image. I like the way that the leaf stem is sticking up out of the water and the leaf is nicely placed in the frame. I would wish that the leaf wasn't partially submerged as that makes it harder to distinguish from the water. If the leaf was floating up on the surface tension (as in your previous similar post) this image would be well off the charts! :S3:

[Ken Childs]

Hey Jules, this one definitely is a red overload! While I like the colors as they are, they seem too strong so even if this is close to what it really looked like, I'd take them down a notch or 2. Maybe masking the leaf and taking down the color on everything else would make the leaf stand out. As Steve said, if the leaf were more defined, this one would be off the charts!

Maybe Bloody Pond would work better as a title! :bg3: