Huge Oak need advice

Roadkill

I would love to make this look better. First it was a gloomy overcast day and I'm under a tree canopy so everything is flat and dull. So I bracketed the shot and none of that looked that great, so I HDR'd it which gave it some life, but it seems like it needs something.... What?

Nikonic1

It seems like the sky is quite dark. Is this in a location you could shoot again on a sunny day? Is there ever fog in this area or low clouds that would produce some sun rays through the high twisted branches?

It's certainly a cool old tree.

Azzaro

Hi Phil.......That is a really a neat old tree, and if you can I would shoot it again, early in the morning or late in the day. If it was a raw file you might get some pop to it. I did a screen grab and played with it to see if I could give you some ideas, but didn't have any luck.... azzaro

Zerodog

Brightness and contrast tweaking could help. Possibly throwing in a graduated filter and pumping up the exposure from the top a few notches.
Another thing might be to desaturate the sky so it is just white.

If you are using LR you could also move up the lightness slider and see what it does too.

Or just give up on color and do a high contrast B&W conversion. It would look pretty cool and creepy.

Wil Davis

Beautiful tree!

Nice picture…

…needs person sitting on bench!



- Wil

Roadkill

Ok, tried all the above... I just need to go back and re-shoot it. Which is ok, there were a couple other things out there I wanted to hit again with some better lighting.


Thanks everybody

Zerodog

Roadkill wrote:

I would love to make this look better. First it was a gloomy overcast day and I'm under a tree canopy so everything is flat and dull. So I bracketed the shot and none of that looked that great, so I HDR'd it which gave it some life, but it seems like it needs something.... What?

Here is what I tried with it. Tell me what you think.

Roadkill

Not bad... I see what you did. Looks like I just need to go back there and reshoot. I can use the practice... lol

Thanks

BizShotz

For me, I'd try continuing down the simple route and knocking the brightness down just a click more. See what that does for it. I agree, it is a good shot, and an excellent subject!

rwells

You can of course go a zillion different ways with this. What's really important is what YOU like.


Just a little different processing ~ I'll gladly delete this if you wish
Untitled-1.jpg

Roadkill

rwells wrote:

You can of course go a zillion different ways with this. What's really important is what YOU like.


Just a little different processing ~ I'll gladly delete this if you wish
Untitled-1.jpg

I like that look, Desaturated and contrast? What did you do?

rwells

Roadkill wrote:

I like that look, Desaturated and contrast? What did you do?

I was afraid you were going to ask that

Let me think ~ I desaturated it ~ Adjusted curves and levels ~ burned the sky ~ sharpened the trunk, ivy and bench ~

I think that's about it.