It was interesting to capture the tree in front of many different backgrounds and with different contrasts to the rest of the wprld. The hardest part was of course at the left, where we have to somehow enhance the low contrast of one green over the other green. I would be glas to read about techniques that you use for such cases.
Exactly Andre, they use the white egg on a white background to demonstrate to the students the importance of shadows for shape recognition. For example, a face without any shadow whatsoever is only a flat thing with not much character.
For this green on green I could also exaggerate shadows by some correction of EV downwards, of course at the expense of color saturation. Still, there are people out there who find excellent and very elegant solutions to such problems. We can only learn from them. And funny thing is that most of the time the solutions proposed are also so easy! Easy to do, that is, but not easy at all to think of. It might be that elegance and simplicity of solutions to problems go hand in hand.
I also see the image of the tree in snow as something special. This one here is way not at the same level. But I do imagine also what this one might have been, if I were able to do that at the same level of quality. And so I keep on trying similar shots not as much for a "great photo" but rather as studies in the sense of "even negative results are useful, since they narrow the domain of possible attempts to solve some specific problem". Sometimes it seems that a solution can be only achieved by excluding anything that is wrong, rather, than by finding directly what is right.
Hi Nick, I think I understand what you mean. There may be certain circumstances where you don't have any choice and would like to have a way to distinguish similar colours. The white egg on the white background is a good example. Of course the use of shadows and diffused light can help greatly in that situation. With this green on green tree, it might be possible to selectively adjust areas with contrast, saturation or colour balance tools. (digital manipulation)
Still, no matter what you do to this image, it will never compare to the beautiful image of the single tree in the snow with the greay sky in the background :) Andre
Thank you very much for the comment and the idea, Andre!
Well, working on such difficult problems may not give us any valid solutions but it will add much to our photographic toolbox, since we keep on thinking and trying this and that. One of the most widely used exercises for students of arts is to let them paint a white egg on a white background. (Poor students! ;-)) Almost nobody manages to do that in a reasonable way, but recognizing what is so special in such a situation is invaluable by itself.
I still do not have any answer too, but let's see if some answer could be found some day.
Hi Nick, It is a situation that I try to stay away from as much as possible. So I really don't have an answer for you this time. It is a difficult challenge when the two greens are so similar. One thing I would try is to take the image from a different POV, so that the tree is in contrast with the ground, or the sky. But, I know that wasn't the answer you were looking for. Andre
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