cedar and shadow

[greer]

I really liked the way the sun was filtering in through the cedar branches.

1/6 sec
f/4.5
30 mm
ISO 160
handheld
lens: Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
post processing: none

If I had the chance to shoot this over again, I definitely would increase the ISO, or used a tripod.

[Gunsotsu]

It's a beautiful image, but I find my eye wandering all over the image trying to find a focal point.

[crustmuffin]

Great light, but I agree with Gunsotu about focal point. Doesn't hardly bother me, though.

[Saralonde]

Beautiful lighting. What time of day did you take this?

[Redrabbit]

Great lighting. I would like to know what time of day as well.

[hsroxas]

Nice to see that IS works. Without IS 1/6 of a seconds hand held would normally result in a blurry image already.

[sf_duff]

I agree regarding the point of focus. By cropping the light out of the right side of the photo--using the darker tree as a foreground seems to make the light coming through the trees the focus...as the photographer wanted. I like this a lot.

[greer]

Thanks for the comments and suggestions everyone. I really like how this forum is going. It has been great for me to get feedback on this photo, and studying other people's photos and coming up with worthwhile suggestions has been a great learning process.

Back to the photo at hand:

Gunsotsu and Muffin: The lack of focal point is a good observation. I will have to keep that in mind (even when I'm distracted by great light).

hsroxas: The IS definitely does help (and really saved my bacon here), but I think I may have pushed it a bit to far. There is some softness, but luckily I think it works for the mood of this shot.

Sara and Rabbit: I took this late in the day, at approximately 8:30 PM, in July. The sun was quite low in the sky, but not setting yet.

sf_duff: I like the idea of cropping out the light area on the far right to simplify the image and bring more focus to the central area of light. I will try that and re-post it here later.

[wulf]

If you're playing with cropping, how about turning it from landscape to portrait as an experiment, focussing on the framed patch of golden light? I'm not sure it will quite work as there is nothing particularly strong to bridge the top of the frame but it might give another way of looking at it.

Was it somewhere near you? If so, it would also be worth heading back a few more times to grab some more pictures, which would let you experiment with reframing in the camera (and thus getting more detail and a better frame).

Wulf

[greer]

Interesting suggestion wulf. I don't know if the glowing greenery will have enough interest on its own, but I will give it a try. It's weird how you can get attached to certain aspects of your photos (like the light falling on the forest floor) and have trouble cropping them out. It is great to hear an outside perspective.

The location is pretty close to my house, so I can certainly redo this shot. I'll have to wait until summer though, if I want similar light (and no snow) in the shot. It would probably be a good learning experience to start over again.

Any suggestions for exposure improvement? Someone on Flickr suggested that darker would be better, but I don't know if I would want to loose the texture in the tree trunks and the deep redish brown on the ground. What do you guys think?