I always wanted to try one of these, so when I was at Zion, I saw this opportunity. This is what I consider a technically challenging shot of no particular artistic merit.

Ben,
Not sure what kind of input you are looking for.
Technical?
Scott

Not sure what input is required for this. Maybe how to do it? How to process it? Why did I even take it? Why did I post it? The last is because of two reason, the forum is slow and I am out of stuff to post.

"... one of these."

Shots with the sun?

Looks a bit dull in the leaves. Perhaps a bit of crop, a mid-tone bump, a smidgeon of sharpening, bumping the saturation for yellow and red to make the leaves pop, a bit of a crop, and some noise reduction:

Thanks Karen, that what I was looking for.

With the sun backlight, and the open sky being behind the leaves as well ... much of the lighting on the leaves is going to be diffuse (viewed from camera side), or translucent.

Diffuse lighting by nature is low contrast ... hence Karen's "bumps" to bring it up a notch. I'm not seeing much CA (at this size), what lens did you use?

Also, I'm a bit surprised by the exposure @ Sunny 22, which would suggest an underexposure from the usual Sunny 16. But, then again, with as many blown red channels as I had during my trip ... the light really must be stronger there.

Interesting that the tree trunks are exposed as well as they are given the backlight. Was the ground/surface below very light in color to reflect light onto the trunks? I presume this was a single shot exposure?

Rob

Good point Rob.

RustyBug wrote:
With the sun backlight, and the open sky being behind the leaves as well ... much of the lighting on the leaves is going to be diffuse (viewed from camera side), or translucent.

Diffuse lighting by nature is low contrast ... hence Karen's "bumps" to bring it up a notch. I'm not seeing much CA (at this size), what lens did you use?

Also, I'm a bit surprised by the exposure @ Sunny 22, which would suggest an underexposure from the usual Sunny 16. But, then again, with as many blown red channels as I had during my trip ... the light really must be stronger there.

This is the new 24-70 f2.8 mk2 which is a pretty good lens for flare. I stopped down to get the star burst effect. It is also very good at CA.

RustyBug wrote:
Good point Rob.

CS6 is really good at bringing up shadows. The SOOC may answer some questions.

Gotcha ... that helps.

And here is one I tried to do with Karen's version in mind. I hate f22, at least 50 dust bunnies, but I sent the camera in last week and now it probably only has 20 at f22.

I wanted more glow in the leaves. It's starting to get a little crunchy here. But with the original it probably wouldn't be as bad.

Hi, was there before I worked on the black point.

Forgot to mention I applied a noise reduction before sharpening to limit "The Crunchies".

Yep, I normally sharpen in ACR but when I need NR I turn it off and sharpen later. I had the advantage of working with the raw.

This is more like what I was going for originally.

well you really pulled it up from the original. I can't figure out how to feel about this image.

Just feel what you feel ...

I feel a non keeper