Leaf in Black & White

[Julie Kenward]

Here's another leaf image from this past autumn. I did a conversion to black and white using Nik's Silver Efex and then added motion blur to the water to smooth it out.

Canon 40D, EF 400mm f/5.6L
f10 @ 1/320th, ISO 400
Handheld, manual mode, pattern metering
Natural light
Processed in ACR/CS5 & Silver Efex, NR with Neat Image

[Dennis Bishop]

Beautiful image, Jules. Great range of tones in the leaf, and I really like how defined the leaf is against the smoothed water. Using motion blur on the water was very creative and effective.

[Brendan Dozier]

Jules, I was waiting to see what you would do with the B&W here, and this turned out very nice! Great tones and like the quiet stillness to composition. Blur on water works great. Very minor, the very subtle kind of halo/lighter tone around edge of upper most part of the leaf, wondering if darkening that area to match more closely surrounding tone would make it better?

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Jules, this works very well in B/W, although I also liked those nice color combinations of fall color leaves and water. Positioning of the leaf gives a very pleasing composition. I do wish for a sliver of canvas on top and a sliver off the bottom. I also see the halo mentioned by Brendan, which is a bit distracting.

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks guys...I agree about the halo...didn't see it until after I posted so I'll go take another look at that. Jerry, nice idea about the slice off the top and added to the bottom - I can see exactly what you're talking about. I'll go try again!

[Ken Childs]

I loved this when I saw it on FB so I'm glad you posted it here, too! Jerry's suggestion of adding some to the top and removing some from the bottom is a good one. The halo really doesn't bother me but the lack of sharpness on the back right edge of the leaf is a bit. The rest of the edges look sharp so I'm not sure what this one isn't....maybe that edge is folded back and isn't presenting a clean edge to the camera. Whatever the reason, it might be worth a try to sharpen that edge a bit more.

I really like what the B&W treatment did to this photo. It's interesting that in B&W, I don't want to see the reflection lightened up at all. :bg3:

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Jules. I like what you did with your B&W treatment of this image (and B&W isn't really my thing - as you probably already know :S3:). Very nice comp, detail, and contrast and I would agree that the smoothed-out water looks great. This is very well done and a couple minor tweaks, as noted above, will make this even better!

[Bob Miller]

Jules...This worked well in B&w and the motion blur on the water is a great idea i will try to use myself. The only thing that bothers me at all is the halo