Cape tribulation stream...

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys, spent two weeks in Northern Queensland recently, visiting Cape Tribulation and the Daintree river. This is an image from that trip of the tropical rainforest typical of that area. The weather was not as I had hoped, it was suppose to be the 'dry' season but no... it rained, and rained, and rained....Guess that why they call it rainforest. 1D4 & 24 to 70 F2.8 @ F13 and 1/2 sec exposure. ISO 100, Tripod mounted. Full frame. Processed in CS6 using ACR followed by a bit of sharpening using the Nik package. Hope you enjoy it.. DON

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Don - It does look like a wet and lush environment. I think some of the highlights are a bit too strong and that there's some cyan coming through as well. I took the liberty of doing a repost. I applied a luminosity mask at 60%, dropped the cyans by -30 and increased the darkness of the greens by 20 points in a hue/saturation layer, finally I burned the highlights in the fg palm by 8%. From a comp standpoint, I might have tried to include the entire fg palm. WDYT?

TFS,
Rachel

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Don,
I think Rachel was on the right track on including the FG palm.....but don't know what other elements were there as they may have interfered. Overall, I think the image is a bit flat and chaotic compositionally....mostly due to the light areas drawing my eye but also the brownish branches/dead leaf on the LH side. IMO.....two possible solutions......first is my favorite....simply a pano crop....just above the dead branches below the sky area.....this makes me feel enveloped in the forest and leads me down river....make sense? Second option is to fix the dead brances and the lighter areas. For me there would still be too much canopy comp wise......but you may also explore a combo of the two. Just some food for thought.

[Don Railton]

Hello Rachel & Roman. Thank you very much for your replies. Rachel, your repost is better in that you have gone further with reducing the highlights than I did. This was the major issue I faced when processing this image and thought I had gone 'far enough'. This was taken close to the middle of the day and while the sun was not shining, the forest is quite dark and the contrast extreme where ever the canopy opens up. I have no excuse with the palm tree being clipped, other that there were 3 others in my party saying "take your time", " no rush", "are you done yet?".... this is the major lesson I learnt on this trip, unless you are exclusively travelling with others photographers, its not going to be a photography trip, no matter what you think. Roman, your suggested Pano crop is right on the money... It gives the "draw" into the image I was wanting but could not see... I do remember scrambling up this stream and looking at this scene and thinking 'how can I make something out of this mess' and my mind went blank.. regards to you both DON

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Don, some good suggestions already and Rachel's repost works better with the reduced highlights. Rainforest-like environments can be very messy locations to photograph as there is always lots going on. You don't mention using a polarizer for this scene...using one would have reduced the glare from the leaves and made them more lush looking.

[Cheryl Slechta]

I like Roman's suggestion of a pano crop from the top. I think that's what make BPN such a great learning tool - I know there are a lot of times when I can't see the forest for the trees but someone else always will and leads me out of my fog

[dankearl]

A polarizer would have definitely improved this for me. I would have liked no glare on the water.
These scenes are tough, I don't where to say where you crop or not, something will always be
cut off, so I don't mind the palm.

[Don Railton]

Hi Cheryl, I agree, 150%... BPN has helped me so much... Dan and Andrew, unfortunately I don't have a CP filter for this lens, but I agree it should be part of my kit and would have helped here..