My Mental Seeds blog is a promise to myself. A promise of personal work. A promise to find new ways to express what I see. Even in images I imagined before my eyesight changed.
This image has been gnawing on me for years now, waiting to be revealed. Taken from a group of photos I took near Como, Colorado while working on the American Meadow Garden, I have always felt I had stumbled upon something special when I found this long abandoned road leading into a grove of aspens in fall color.
Every time I would go back to the photo I would recall the clean white mountain light turning golden, turning me golden, as it passed through the trees and washed bright over the land. And every time I went back to try and render the feeling I couldn’t get it. Now, with a better understanding of my digital toolbox, I am getting closer.
Closer, but not final. I have two states of this image and am indecisive as to which is “better”. Having promised to get at least one image and one blog post done every month, and it now being the last day of February, I am postponing my final decision and showing both.
Here is the second state, cropped to a panorama, more golden, more glow.
In both photos I have used the Clarity control of Adobe Camera Raw in different amounts to reduce hard edges without blurring; and in both I have done all sorts of other tweaks to blacks, highlights, and color levels. I have tried to live with each for a couple days to see which settles in me, and find each make me happy to look at them.
I can’t decide, so – postpone the final decision.
I also played with an abstract expression of the leaves, hoping I accented the blacks just enough to give these specks of gold some rhythm and structure.
And I can’t resist the calendar view of this grove of trees under the crisp blue Colorado sky. Note the abandoned road to orient the first photos.
Now onward. I have decided to be indecisive. Move on…
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Is there anything more thrilling than aspens in fall? I love birches, but they don’t make a mass golden cloud statement like aspens. (The reason they’re massed is because an entire stand is often just one tree, roots connected, genetically identical to the original but sprouting up everywhere around for generations.) I like photo 1 because I think the gold needs the depth of the shadows, and the gorgeous trunks and twigs are more prominent than in the more abstracted second shot. And I love your calendar shot because those aspens need brilliant blue sky to truly explode. Rocky Mountain high!
Janet – Thanks. Did you know some will argue that aspens are among the oldest living trees because of their groves spreading out from one original tree ? Entire groves can have the same DNA.
Thanks for the helpful comments. I know the first one has more depth and substance but lacks the bright airy wash of gold I felt in the moment. David has some good ideas on this, below.
Saxon, though I’m not sure that it actually is more ‘true’ the first version immediately feels a bit more ‘true’ to my eye than the “more golden, more glow” version. Not sure how you achieved that glow, but my first thought is that even a semi-universal golden wash over everything doesn’t reflect the realities of light play in a way that our finely tuned reality/bullshit detectors won’t at least hear a few warning pings.
Wondering if you go in, via Photoshop/adjustments or by different tinted layers and then painting them into one another, golden up your highlights and mid-tones, as makes sense to suite your gold hunger, while actually cooling the shadows a bit.
In my experience, light passing thru the leaves will really color tint those areas where it spreads and falls, and mildly tint those areas it bounces into reflectively, but it will scarcely affect the areas that are primarily blue-sky lit, and somehow shaded from any directional golden glow. Even a semi-universal ‘wash’ will tint the areas that would in real life never experience such a warming, and it will leave something uneasy within your inner compass, no matter how pretty.
Love the shots, love the labor of love. You rock!
Dave – Thanks for your very thoughtful comments, oh master photo coach.
I am delighted I activated your bullshit detector and that your reality detectors are questioning what they are seeing. You are clearly paying attention and your compass seems to wonder whether it should point in some other dimension than held flat looking for north.
You have sparked some great ideas for the next state. What fun to trade ideas.
Happy birthday, buddy. Namasté
In total agreement with Janet and David. More tones are visible in image 1. The golden image to me, is too golden. At first I thought you used Photomatrix Pro on a single image, not Camera Raw on image 2.
Donna – This is great to receive all the feedback. Before bringing these photos into PhotoShop for individual color play both images were initially processed with Bridge in ACR where I am playing with the Clarity slider and creating less clarity between similar tones. I really like the gauzy glow I felt in that scene though images then need help in the blacks and shadows to bring back certain tones. If anything I might simply dial back the color temp on the more golden one, but I do like the ethereal quality of the glow. Thanks again.
I can’t say it quite as eloquently as your other guests, but I am in agreement on the first version as offering a more interest. I find the retained shadows and darker areas, especially in the area of the natural pathway between the aspen, beckon – What mystery awaits? Also, the deeper shadows encourage a spark from the slithers of white bark emanating from within, which give inner-life to the aspen grove.
The second. more golden state, whilst pleasing, seems somewhat flat in comparison – sleeping.
The pictorial “calendar” shot brings us back to the sunny day that shows the general location. But for some reason the clouds and sky in this picture send my “inner visual compass” into a spin and I can’t say exactly why, other than there seems to be a hard biting edge to the clouds (on the left side of the picture) that have lost their gray pillowy softness. Perhaps using the Recovery-slider in PS-Raw to reclaim those clipped pixels.
Interestingly, I have never considered taking the Clarity slider to the softer side. Must try that.
Phil – Hard to compete with Perry for eloquence but you make equally perceptive comments. The mystery in the first photo is one of the key elements I like in that one, and is missing in the second. Can’t have both those rich tones and brilliant glow. Or not yet, will work on it. The photo with clouds and Colorado blue sky is a bit oversaturated I suppose, a quickie in post production. But after looking at all the others, that have reverse Clarity in them, the calendar shot is going to look edgy no matter what.
Thanks a lot for your comments.
Saxon, I should also have mentioned in respect to the first picture, in my comments above; that the natural pathway leading into the grove which is more evident by the deepened shadows, happens to fall – by your cropping – nicely into the “golden area” of the picture. This might be of interest to others interested in powerful photo composition. . .
That old road is what drew me to the scene to start with, but I wanted to include more than the pathway itself to get a better feeling of context, and putting it off center allows the whole scene to become one, yet the focal point is clear. Thanks again.
First photo also has pretty nicely defined rule of thirds: 1. soft grass at base, 2. trunks and shadows and paths in middle, and 3. foliage above (okay, the foliage is a little more generous, but…).
Janet – That “rule” of thirds is one reason I cropped the second photo, thought even that one is a bit heavier on foliage. Thanks for continuing to notice….
If an infrequent site visitor may be permitted comment … I’m feeling that, as suggested by others, the best move would be to bring out the mid- and light tones of the initial image (mostly the tree trunks) without losing those wonderful shadows. But not too much — don’t want to go too far in the HDR direction. I find image #2 a bit too golden … I miss the lingering true summer greens of Image #1. As to crop, in a different compositional context it would be beautiful to keep a heartbreakingly blue sky, but I fear not here. I might crop off just a little less on top and bottom than you did for image #2, because I love those silky grasses more than I do the perfection of the rule of thirds. But that’s just individual taste.
A beautiful image. Wish I were there.
Steve – infrequent site visitors are most welcome as this a fairly infrequent blog. Thanks for stopping by and taking the time for such a thoughtful comment. While most everyone finds the second image too golden, that exaggeration is the feeling I had – of overwhelming golden light under the crisp clear light. But the shadow detail and lingering green in the leaves (well noticed…) give a richness and depth to the first photo, making the second look simplistic in comparison. But no mistaking the golden glow.
One thing I am sure to do is loosen up that crop in the second to see more of those “silky grasses”. I collected seed of those fescues from those clumps, as they caught light particularly well, but alas my gardening skills were not adequate for them to survive my California garden, even though I did get them to germinate.
If you want to get into extreme detail work, I suppose you could use masks and such to take a bit of the gold from the greenest leaves and grasses, while retaining the glow you otherwise want to evoke. Such is the endless, never-finished appeal (curse) of Photoshop. Sometimes I keep working a piece until I’ve destroyed it, and just have to hope that a year or two down the line it will be fresh again. Other times, things suddenly fall into place and all the time seems well worth it …
Steve – You are so right about that curse of PhotoShop. I think all of us love the power it gives us in color photography. Control we never had in the old days. I sometimes wonder if I (we) sometimes fuss over fine tuning too much, when it is best to say “done” and move on. So many photos, so little time ….
Hi Saxon:
An amateur’s view – the first photo is by far the most pleasing, for all the reasons others noted, especially how the shadows draw you in, and provide contrast for the brilliant golds. In that photo the grasses seem like wispy, mystical accents, in the other they just look a little weedy or too light.
I also like the abstract leaves very much.
Laura – Thanks for chiming in. I still like the golden glow but want a way to use the shadows to “draw you in”, as you well note. And thanks for commenting on the leaves. My Jackson Pollock homage… -Saxon
Saxon, although I am no judge of fine photography (I can’t take a truly magnificent shot to save my life and in the old GGW photography contests, I never correctly guessed who the winners would be nor why), I do have an eye for beauty and I know what pleases me eye at least, and Photograph #1 is it…. just the way it is, no cropping needed. When I look at that image I want to walk down that abandoned road and see what lies deep within the trees.
#2 is too golden – the gold is so bright, it makes it harder for me to see detail. I find the brilliant gold far to harsh – it actually hurts my tender eyes to look at it for any length of time.
#3 is fine as a technical exercise but as a photograph, it leaves me wanting. I want to know what else is in the tree canopy (birds, for example) but I can’t see them. It would make a nice albeit busy fabric pattern for someone who likes yellow (not me). I wouldn’t hang it over my sofa and probably couldn’t sleep if it were on the wall over my bed.
#4 is a great calendar picture – the yellows pop against the blue in a very dramatic way – but it just tells me that Mother Nature is alive and well in Colorado. In fact, I find the sky to be a bit of a distraction – it draws my eye away from the lovely abandoned road that I so wanted to explore in Image #1.
#1 is ethereal. It does that nebulous thing you speak of often and that I find so hard to capture digitally – it tells a story. There is a road into the woods. I want to know where it goes. I want to know why no one goes there any longer. I want to walk down that pathway, with my feet making impressions in the soft grass. I want to listen to the insects and the birds as the tree canopies close over my head. It’s the rare photograph that affects me on an emotional level and leaves me truly wanting…. this one does. And it makes me like yellow, the color that everyone who knows me knows I despise. (Years ago I exiled all yellow flowers to a single bed in my garden, a bed I named Siberia.)
Cathy – Thanks for your very thoughtful comments. Hearing that you don’t like yellow makes your comments all the more interesting. You are right in that the first photo tells more of a story but the second is ALL about yellow, golden yellow, screaming bright beautiful yellow. A large print will cheer up any room, even one in Siberia. Saxon
My husband would agree with you and poke me in the arm, were he to read this. Then again, yellow is his favorite flower color. I, on the other hand, would offer to help crate it for shipment (to you-know-where).
While I spent several years getting chemotherapy including nearly two full years on a ventilator, my husband singlehandedly took care of the gardens. You’ll be happy to know that since then, I’ve added yellow to virtually every bed except our all white shade garden – not because I like it any better (I don’t), but because my husband is a very special guy and he deserves to weed and tend to flowers he loves, just as I do.
Your first image could find it’s way into a frame in our kitchen. The second one, I’m afraid I’d dig my heels in on that one. I’d let him buy it if he insisted, but I’d bluntly invite him to take it to work and let it brighten up the clinic.
Let me explain it this way….. #1 brings to mind Debussy’s Claire de Lune – languid and melodic, poetic and lyrical, evolving into more complex and dramatic themes the deeper into the woods you go.
#2, on the other hand, reminds me of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps – a brash cacophony that in my view is best experienced in very small doses.
That said, I must admit, I’ve never spent this much time analyzing photographs that contained so much yellow. That is as much a tribute to your talent as it is an acknowledgement of my utter lack of theoretical knowledge in art appreciation (and probably taste as well) when it comes to photography.