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
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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 ). 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!
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