the secret creek

[Lorenz Koch]

the secret bridge over the secret creek in the secret valley..

lol

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Lorenz,

This is a beautiful picture showing excellent light, I'm impressed. Actually, I have come back to take a look at it many times today. I am not 100% certain about the composition though. It is difficult to explain what I mean, the tree on the left hand side is a bit of an issue. I’d either crop it a bit from the left or do something else all together. I’d also like to see a little bit more of the foreground which would lead my eyes to finally rest on the bridge as the focal point.

Neverthless, forget about my silly nitpick. I am certain that this is a smashing image when one sees it printed properly and not on the computer screen.

Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Lorenz,

Welcome again to OPF! I am not responding to posts today as my lumbar disc problem is really back with a vengeance, but I had to comment on this picture of yours. I like the very quiet setting with the light coming through the trees to the bridge and also putting a bright edge of the sides of trees, the rail of the bridge and a spot on the ground where elves and fairies could dance. It's very magical. The colors are rich. There's the beginning of the mixture of fall leaf changes.

Like Cem, I have questions on the composition. I in fact studied this for a while. This place is fascinating. I would have liked to have gone ten feet to the right and taken more pictures. I found that cropping a tad from the bottom and right strengthened the picture but is no really needed.

What I discovered really is worthwhile is to spend time enhancing the light beams coming diagonally from the upper right. This is a special picture that's really enjoyable to spend time with.

I discovered that you have stripped all the EXIF info from the image! So what camera and lens and shot conditions do we have to be jealous of?

Asher

Any other images in this series/

 

[Lorenz Koch]

hello cem and asher
thank you very much for taking your precious time to compose such meaty responses.

you two probably just put more thought into composure than i ever did.
in order for you to understand this i have to tell you the circumstances under which this image was shot.

imagine..

the black forest near the swiss border... a beautiful and sunny but still a bit chilly in the shadows week-end day in mid october. the leaves are beginning to fall.. the ground is all muddy from the recent rainfall and the still evaporating morning dew rises from all the rich green moss that's everywhere. mushrooms and the low sun angle make the scene perfect for elves and gnomes to roam their homelands.
and through this serenity rips the barking and panting of a full blown pack of eighteen dogs of all breeds (including my two great danes) and their respective owners.

well that's my dog group on a fall hike through the black forest..
the tracks in that region are wide enough for one person to walk comfortably.
in order to have no dog or person in that picture i had to halt the whole treck for a few seconds - frame the picture - shoot and walk on..
kind of a walk by shooting and nothing meticulously planned.
the image is not cropped. i'd have to look up the exif file later on. i always "save for web" because of filesize.

here's another shot from that hike:

that lovely place's called robber's castle..
since the peasant's war in the fifteen-hundreds there isnt much of a man built castle left but a now red leafed tree to tell a story or two...

 

[Ron Morse]

I really like the first shot. We have a lot of places here in Maine very similar.

 

[Lorenz Koch]

hello ron
well in maine you have the awesome combination of ocean and pinetrees..
i envy you for that we only get the pinetrees here

ok so here's the requested exif for the first image:

 

[Cedric MASSOULIER]

Hi,

First image is really good and magic.

 

[Trudy Montgomery]

both photos are stunning! I only see beauty in both. Thank you for sharing them as the are inspiration. I hope and aspire to capture similar photos in my neck of the woods.... one day.

~trudy

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Hi Lorenz,

This is a great story and puts the pictures into a perspective although the pictures themselves are good enough to stand on their own with or without a story behind them.

...the black forest near the swiss border... a beautiful and sunny but still a bit chilly in the shadows week-end day in mid october. the leaves are beginning to fall.. the ground is all muddy from the recent rainfall and the still evaporating morning dew rises from all the rich green moss that's everywhere. mushrooms and the low sun angle make the scene perfect for elves and gnomes to roam their homelands.
..

This is exactly what I meant when I wrote that I would like to see more details in the foreground. Shooting from a lower point would possibly achieve that. And then you could tilt the camera a bit upwards and capture the majestic trees and the rays of the sun in a different way. I am not saying that it would then be a better picture but a different one. You really should try and go back there with a tripod soon, and leave the great Danes back home ;-).

Cheers,

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

...here's another shot from that hike:

that lovely place's called robber's castle..
since the peasant's war in the fifteen-hundreds there isnt much of a man built castle left but a now red leafed tree to tell a story or two...

Hi Lorenz,

Composition wise, this picture is much more balanced IMO. At the base, we have a wide and stable triangle basis formed by the roots of the tree. This makes the picture stand on its own. Then we see the V shape created by the tree trunks leading our eyes to the crown of the tree. There the form is oval which is contained within the frame of the picture. The contents and the colour of the oval are interesting and they keep our gaze there. We do not wander off the picture looking for other areas of interest. Also the color distribution is from dark and sundued at the bottom to bright at the top which also lead our gaze to the end point. All in all, a great composition .

Cheers,

 

[Albert Ramos]

Lorenz, that first pic is marvelous, but the story behind it is even more magical!

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Lorenz,

Composition wise, this picture is much more balanced IMO. At the base, we have a wide and stable triangle basis formed by the roots of the tree. This makes the picture stand on its own. Then we see the V shape created by the tree trunks leading our eyes to the crown of the tree. There the form is oval which is contained within the frame of the picture. The contents and the colour of the oval are interesting and they keep our gaze there. We do not wander off the picture looking for other areas of interest. Also the color distribution is from dark and sundued at the bottom to bright at the top which also lead our gaze to the end point. All in all, a great composition .

Cheers,

Hi Cem,

An apt critique. As you point out the eyes do not wander off but rather, there's a lot to contain our interest.

Lorenz,

I too am fascinated and enriched by the introduction to the photograph and the dynamics of controlling 18 dogs and their owners in the rising mist of the land of elves and goblins is no small feat. This second picture lacks the light-beams filtered through the leafy canopy however, it turns out to be far more interesting.

This is quite a remarkable picture that really is an idea one might want to give generous room in a landscape composition. The compositional elements are very strong but seem untidy. The roots system comes not from one tree but several stalwarts, each claiming sovereignty over additional pieces of the foreground. One trunk is dead. So this is a community of generations and so represents passage of time. The upper part with the crown is equally packed with complexes of diagonal branches competing for and reaching to different part of the sky. One has the feeling that this fierce coexistence has gone on for hundreds of years. In fact, these trees, albeit with different trunks, might even be just one plant.

The leaves are golden and yellow and red and the complementary greens are shown in the lower half of the picture. The complement of orange, blue, would be expected in the sky and it seems to be added at the artificial horizon created between the leaves and the trunk and roots.

There is a rotational energy in the root formation and this contrasts with the sturdy verticals of the trunks and the balancing outstretched arms of the horizontal branches forming a "scarecrow" like guardian figure in the tree on the left.

I wish this was not so tightly framed, but that's my feelings most of the time! Still, the overall energy packed into this picture will allow this to be printed 16x24 and still hold out attention and draw us in to this very ancient world. The center of the picture would make for an interesting B&W image celebrating the scarecrow figure and the dead ancestor.

Asher