I pass these woods every day on the way to work, so sooner or later the light was going to be good. Taken with a 1950's TL Rolli. Scanned from a print

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), December 29, 1998

Answers

Great!!! I really like how the light rays fill the shadow area on the lower right. Great use of the square format!! What film and paper did you use?

-- sheldon hambrick (shambric@us.oracle.com), December 29, 1998.

Larry,

Very nice image, my only complaint is the location of the palmetto (?) fronds right in front of the "tunnel" of trees that would otherwise be the center of interest.

The shapes of the trees, the sense of distance, the "God beams", the off-center subjects (the sun and the "tunnel") with connecting diagonals all make for a very dramatic image, good work.

Frank

-- Frank Kolwicz (bb389@lafn.org), December 29, 1998.

Larry,

Great, I keep looking for this too, hasn't happened yet. I would have tried a shot with the bright spot, I assume the sun coming through, in the upper right hidden behind a suitable big branch to shove the center of interest more toward the beautiful tunnel.

I assume you took more than one photo. Could you show some more or a location where they could be viewed.

Its terriffic in feeling and sense of wanting to be there to see if for myself. A photo like this is to be shared.

Ben

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 29, 1998.

Magical light of course. I love the spotlit area in the back, the shot has depth. The jumble of intertwined limbs at the top is interesting and the shadows on the ground mirror them. It's these relationships that make me want to look at it again and again.

-- Mike Green (mgprod@mindspring.com), December 30, 1998.

This reminds me a lot of one of my favorite Ansel Adams pictures, of similar light illuminating a live oak woods at Castle Rock State Park, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

I really like your photo a great deal, all the more because it is an extremely dynamic composition in square format; very often I think that square photos are compositionally static (this is a limitation of seeing, not of the format, of course). The tonality is very fine, at least at this resulution. This is one of the first photos I've seen here that I wouldn't mind having on my wall. It's striking but subtle enough that one could live with it without getting bored.

It's impossible to say from the scan, but would the Image be stronger if most of the values were ~0.5 zone lighter? The shadows might open up and the highlights become a tad more delicate. Of course I'm sure that the print has more tonal separation than the image on my display.

Superb work!

-- Alexey Merz (alexey@webcom.com), December 30, 1998.

Larry, This is image is superb in all the ways already mentioned. I do agree with Frank about the palmetto(?) fronds in the center. They take a bit away from the dark, bold forms of the tree trunks and that beautiful area of light in the center background. But this is a very minor criticism. Great work!

-- Barbara Kelly (kellys@alaska.net), January 06, 1999.