Looking for small details in a vast forest, sometimes one finds natural abstracts.
This weathered tree stump with map like contours caught my eye. Here is a black and white conversion:
The Aspen leaf in this photo had not quite completed its color transformation, before it fell to rest upon a mossy bed.
I prefer to photograph these little details as I find them; but sometimes I’m tempted to move things around. I did not move anything in the photo above; but I can’t help but wonder, if I should have. Should I have removed the blade of grass pointing at the Aspen leaf in the middle? Or does that blade of grass serve as a useful pointer in this photograph? Would this image be better, if I had cleared away some of the debris around the edges or the scattered leaves, leaving just the single leaf in the center? What about that little twig resting on the stump to the left of the center leaf?
I have no objection to “posing” a natural scene for artistic purpose and I have removed man made items from natural scenes and I’m quite ok with this. I’ve occasionally removed a twig, a fallen tree limb or a blade of grass, if I thought those were distracting in a scene. But nature is not perfect, so will “cleaning” a scene make it unreal? Is unreal ok in this sense? No one would know the scene has been modified, if not so informed by the photographer. Is it acceptable to “manufacture” a natural scene?
And I will wrap up this portion of this morning’s photos with one final forest image, which I just noted this morning was chosen for Flickr’s Explore page.
Stay tuned for the rest of today’s story,
Ken
It is always a dilemma as to how much editing should be done to a photo, but I think I would have removed that blade of grass pointing to the leaf. I find it distracting in what is otherwise a lovely photo of a woodland scene.
Hi, Shutterpug. Thanks so much for your candid feedback. This is exactly the kind of critique that I always hope to get on my photographs, so that I can work to improve my image making process.
While I can remove that blade of grass in post processing, I find that I have much difficulty getting pleasing results in a complex image. Maybe I am just too picky about the results. Maybe it is only because I know where an object has been removed and I can always see some artifact of the edit that most other viewers would not notice. Whenever I do this sort of removal of an undesired object in an image, it often takes some experimentation and repeated attempts at edits to get suitable results. Sometimes, I just give up and leave the image as it is, because I just can’t get a pleasing result. However, in the case of the blade of grass, I could easily have removed it prior to taking the shot and that is what I should have done in this case. I just need to take more time looking at a scene and considering what can be done to exclude distracting objects.
Thanks for taking time to comment. Your feedback is always welcome.
Ken
I am a fan of nature abstracts. The first 2 work well in color and B&W. Our aspen trees are just starting to leaf out.
Thanks, Denise. Sounds like spring is arriving there.