One in a series that I have started on natural South Florida. This group of mangroves is on the west edge of Biscayne Bay just off of Snapper Creek.
Getting the shot:
I paddleboarded along the coast to find some mangrove islands to shoot and ended up getting these mangroves along the coast instead. My May free study entry has the mangrove islands that I am talking about and was taken a couple days earlier about a half mile away.
I used a .6, soft edged neutral density filter to help even out the differences in exposure between the bright sky and water, and the prop roots below the foliage.
Post Processing:
I finished off the balancing of the exposure by combining three exposures of a single image in Photomatix after opening the image in Nikon Capture NX and using numerous control points. The sky still lacked the detail that you see here so I brought the detail out further with shadow/highlights. Color balance was shifted in the sky towards magenta and red.
How will it score?
I think it will score fairly well as long as voters accept these mangrove roots as unusual. They still strike me as unusual even though they are a natural part of my environment. I'm thinking that they must seem unusual to those who don't see them often. I'm hoping for a 6.5 or better.
Post Challenge: Well, 5.6 is a very disappointing score. For people to comment that this doesn't seem unusual makes me wonder how many mangroves or other prop root type trees there are in New Hampshire or Melbourne.
Statistics
Place: 44 out of 109 Avg (all users): 5.6435 Avg (commenters): 7.1429 Avg (participants): 5.0732 Avg (non-participants): 5.9595 Views since voting: 1047 Views during voting: 254 Votes: 115 Comments: 10 Favorites: 1 (view)
I do love the mangroves and this is a great shot of them, really silky. If I did have a criticism, it would be the heaviness of the border, but I can't in conscience mark it down for that. 9
I'm assuming this is the Everglades, a beautiful place, done justice with this photo. Wish I had this kind of cool weather and warm lighting when I camped there last winter
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