This image is one of those images that one minute I like and the next I go so what! It appeals more than I dislike it, although overall it doesn’t have much too it. There are a few small trees close to the top entrance to the gardens off Mayals road, and with the sun back lighting them, I found them quite challenging to make images of.
Fern leaves always make great subjects, so it made a change to get pictures with some snow on them. In previous years the ferns had been protected in the Winter from frosts etc. but for the last couple of years they seemed to have coped quite well with the conditions. I believe that the ferns originally came from New Zealand, but I don’t know if they have snow in the part they originated from. I will have to wait till the spring to see how they respond. It would be a shame to lose one of my regular subjects, but I suppose something else would come along.
The patterns that these tree roots make always get me trying to make an image all year round. I still don’t think I have got the ‘one’ yet, so I will keep trying. I originally was planning to convert this to black and white, but for once the colour image worked better. A little filtration was added in Lightroom to tone down the bright sky between the trees at the top of the frame, but overall it was quite a straight forward image to make if you know how to understand the histogram on the LCD screen on the camera and how it translates in your RAW processing software. What a lot of people don’t realise is the the histogram displayed on the LCD screen is actually that of a JPEG version of the image, and that there is a little bit more leeway with the actual RAW file. The other little known fact is that with the same image in front of the camera the histogram will change with the white colour balance setting you use. Some people go to great lengths to produce an accurate histogram to reflect the RAW exposure range by creating custom profiles to match it. The trouble with these is they tend to make the images get a green colour cast which then needs to be removed later. More time in front of the computer!
