Stills

So your "colour thing" dates at least a few years. This is more contrasty than what you showed before, seems you chose more dusk time to photograph now than then.

That said, this is lovely. The layers play in a classic way. Always effective, always compelling to me.
 

Rex -- perhaps it is just Florida light that provides the colors. You can find out for yourself in the fall.

Stephane -- The park was closing so we had to leave before dusk! ;-)
 

The bands of color are interesting, like a layer cake of prairie.
 

One would like to think that it goes on and on and given that it is 21,000 acres (google!), it probably feels as though it does. The colours are very varied and somewhat give the lie to how one imagines Florida (or how I remember it as predominantly green with mangrove swamps!).
 

A pleasing progression of horizontals and tones. The light, as others have mentioned, is a key part of the finished photograph. It seems to be picking out all the key items just right whilst leaving the 'flatter' areas of the prairie 'flatter'. Without the light you wouldn;t have had much to work with and thus the need for Rex's PS button.
 

When I first saw this I thought that it demonstrated why people buy those 40 megapixel backs. I kept wanting more detail - ever more detail.

But now I look at it differently. The blobs of colour tell their pointillist story well. They don't need to be finer. The result is an idealised landscape - to the point that I could imagine being disappointed by the reality.
 

"The blobs of colour tell their pointillist story well. "

Funny you say that. I recently thought about the huge laugh Manet would have at me fearing to lose something by using a smaller sensor.
 

John -- although the entire park is that many acres, I was a bit dismayed when I was there recently to see so many buildings and some cranes (the mechanical kind) on the horizon from the lookout where this was taken -- an effect not unlike that in Doug's last photo of China.

Colin -- there is actually quite a bit of detail in the original, though it does still have a sort of painted quality -- if you look very closely, the little dots in a few of the trees are black crows!

I have a print of this in an exhibit that just opened -- it got a fair amount of attention, including a gentleman who asked me "how did you get it to look like that?" I didn't understand, and said "that's how it looked!" -- Perhaps he thought it was a Photoshop trick.
 

Lyrical. It is almost like looking at a music sheet with the lines and the trees as the 'notes'. I would be looking for some classical music to play while viewing this!

The darker grass and brush on the bottom with the line of darker trees in the top keep my eyes happily wondering around the beautiful middle ground, Very nice!