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Araantonak [2006-06-21 07:52:04 +0000 UTC]

As you want honest critique, I'll be brutally honest with you:

this is not a good shot, technically. It looks like you metered for the sky and then brightened the shot up in PS to get the exposure for the graveyard part right. The sky is totally overexposed and burned out, even the tree silhouette lost a lot of his detail, while the foreground is grainy and looks unnatural.
Now, to be contructive, how would you take such a difficult shot? It's obvious that the metering for the sky and the foreground won't match up, and the tree is cought in-between. The old-school soluton would be the use of a gradient neutral density filter or a long exposure with a black card moved over the sky for parts of the time. In the digital age, there are other posibilities. People shooting in RAW format could process the shot twice, once for the foreground and once for the sky and then blend the 2 exposure-corrected versions together. Another (even better) technique is to take 2 shots on location with exactly the same composition, but once exposed for the sky and one for the foreground. then blend them together in PS using a large feathered transition area and maybe a bit of layer masking to get some parts needing more precision...

This is an example where I used the ND grad filter for the top part: [link] - if I hadn't my sky would have been simply white.

let me also say that the concept, your thought behind the shot and the composition are quite nice, I would try not havign to crop it though and have the tree a bit off-center. This is defenitely worth shooting again if you feel like trying out the techniques described by me.

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blacklushx [2006-05-27 02:44:41 +0000 UTC]

This is very weird but makes the cemetary look 'scary' Very pretty as well.

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AToxicDelight [2006-05-25 19:21:37 +0000 UTC]

I love it, the tree actually does remind me of the "Tree of Life" in a way, strange that it should be in a graveyard. Did you take a picture closer to it?

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