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Nourished By The Sun
Nourished By The Sun
SquishyB


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Contre-jour (Basic Editing)
Camera: Fujifilm FinePix S5200Z
Location: Rexburg, ID
Date: Mar 31, 2007
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 64
Shutter: 1/950 sec.
Galleries: Nature
Date Uploaded: Mar 31, 2007

A view of the Birch tree in my backyard. PP included levels, slight saturation increase, rotate and sharpen. Also one small spot edit to remove sun glare.

Statistics
Place: 227 out of 332
Avg (all users): 5.0060
Avg (commenters): 0.0000
Avg (participants): 5.0357
Avg (non-participants): 4.9762
Views since voting: 657
Views during voting: 224
Votes: 168
Comments: 4
Favorites: 0


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AuthorThread
04/11/2007 04:26:23 PM
I like your idea. The highlights of the tree with the sun behind can make for an amazing image.

In this case though I think the sun is a bit too central and not enough of the tree (IMO) is getting benefit from the back lighting.

  Photographer found comment helpful.
04/11/2007 04:14:02 PM
I saw your forum post...I'll bite...

The image definitely meets the challenge, and you've done a nice job keeping the sky blue behind the tree and sun, which is often harder than it looks. The trouble with shooting straight into the sun is that the sun is a really bright light, and everything that isn't the sun becomes unnaturally dark. It looks like you're trying to show the sunlight filtering through the fuzzy seed things, but the sun's really bright, so there's too much contrast for it to be attractive. You might try shooting when the sun's lower in the sky and not so bright.

The other thing is to be careful of your background. In this shot, there's some black, blobby looking pine trees in the background. In the lower right corner, they serve a purpose of showing off the sunlight on the birch tree, but on the left side, they're just dark and distracting, and they look like they're leaning backwards, because the camera is pointed towards the sky.

I think on a shot like this, it really helps to ask yourself 2 questions:

1) What is the subject?
2) Is there anything in the shot that's going to pull the viewer's focus away from the subject?

I just looked at your portfolio. It's no accident that on your top rated images, you've done a great job of isolating the subject, and on the lower rated images, you haven't. Especially on DPC, when the voters only look at the image for a few seconds, if there's anything distracting, the voter won't take the time to look any further.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
04/11/2007 11:54:54 AM
In responce to your forum thread, here is what I see in your challenge submittal.

This image meets the challenge and you've handled the tough lighting conditions very well. However, the main subject is dead center in the picture and the trees in the background are a distraction. I would have also tried to isolate the main subject a bit more to remove the branches in the background and the trunk from the birch tree. Overall, this image has the feel of "I could have shot that" instead of "How did they do that" or "I wish I had thought of that".

Tim
  Photographer found comment helpful.
04/11/2007 09:55:24 AM
I like this shot, better than my attempts at this topic. I think a better composition would have helped bump up the score a little bit, maybe placing the sun in the top third of the image.
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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