Stills

This is very much the sort of thing I do on the farm - a sort of doodling of how my trees look at different types of day, in different seasons and in different weather (which is not to say that this is doodling!). Why don't I post them? Well a few have found their way on to my web site but on the whole they lack the background grandeur that this has. You once remarked somewhere that people don't buy into trees, which is why I rarely put them up for public consumption but, as one of the most important living organisms on the planet (and way above humans in usefulness), it seems to be indicative of our species' hubristic outlook not to appreciate tree depiciton more.

In this I like the dancing semicircle of the branches caught by the sun. But I find the trunks oddly light as if over-manipulated.

Is that really a dry stream-bed?
 

John,

This isn't the primary stream (which is further back into the shadows), but one of the secondary ones. The primary stream never dries because there is a lochan at the top. This particular glen gets a lot of flash floods.

One of my hesitations in posting this is that it looks over manipulated - despite having almost no processing work done on it at all (there is, for example, no sharpening on the web version). I'm learning what I can do with digital in the highlights...and this one is on the boundary of being a digital mess.
 

Judging by this version, I would say that the highlights are pretty good with the very top being convincing in a Scottish sort of way. It is just the trunks that catch the eye.

I would like to be around when the secondary is in flood!
 

I am totally absorbed by the circular appearance of the branches in the trees that I'm not really looking at much else. This is a very busy picture which without the aforementioned branches would not be singing to me. The strong diagonal of the secondary stream is masked by the two trees so that nothing behind it can be seen.
 

This is certainly a demanding problem. The confusion of the trees and the tracery of the branches doesn't allow them to be differentiated well from the background. The slight contra jour has produced a radial lighting effect that centres off to top left but doesn't remove all the confusion.

I like the hint of the next hill in the top left which with the mist is evocative of this type of countryside.

I am looking at this wondering what I would have done.
 

As busy as it is, I'd be tempted to make it more so, crop the grass on the bottom and focus on the interplay of light and tree branches. The top third of frame is quite beautiful, but the grass ruins it for me.