Plum Weepy

[terrib]

My Plum tree is weeping...

This is cropped quite a bit because in order to get the DOF I needed, I could only zoom to about 135 at a focus distance of 3 ft. (I don't have a macro or extensions)

Perhaps I could rename this "The Blob" and post it in the Scary Halloween thread. Even more scary is the amount of time I spent walking around the tree trying to find just the right bit of sap and angle of light.

[Daisy Mae]

Terri...that's so gorgeous.

The golds and ambers, that lovely sparkling honey drip...perfect.

great shot.

[glenng]

I like it a lot especially the sunburst at the bottom of the tree sap.

[Sergio M.]

The way the light is hitting the sap along with the colors makes it look crystalline. The time taken to find the right sap and light payed off.

Very cool capture, Terri.

Serge

[Mike Buckley]

Even more scary is the amount of time I spent walking around the tree trying to find just the right bit of sap and angle of light.

That's not at all scary. Instead, that's indicative of a highly disciplined photographer who was paid off handsomely with a highly rewarding image.

Try sharpening everything except the background to the point that it's objectionable and then back off just a tad. That's assuming that you haven't already done that.

I actually wonder if you sharpened the background. If so, eliminate all sharpening in that area.

[FrankMi]

This image is a real beauty Terri. Well worth the effort it took to photograph it the way you did!

[terrib]

Thanks everyone for the compliments as they are very much appreciated.

Mike, I did not do any sharpening other than what's done under the default RAW processing. I will give a try to backing that off and starting over. When you refer to the background, are you just talking about the green out of focus area or also part of the tree?

[Mike Buckley]

Just the green background. If you determine that eliminating the sharpening doesn't make it smoother, try selecting that area and applying a small amount of noise reduction that has no sharpness, only intensity. That's not because that area has noise. It's because using noise reduction might work better than using Gaussian blur.

Whatever you do, make absolutely sure only the green area is selected to ensure that you don't lose the sharp look of the sunburst. Also try to avoid blurring the cob web that is in the area of the green background, though that's not all that important to the image.