I guess everyone had a hard time choosing his best picture taken last year, same here. I wanted to enter something that was different from my usual entries. Although that limited the number of images a lot, there were still quite a few candidates left in the end.
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Looks like a magical tree and I feel maybe missed out on some nice takes of the tree itself. maybe wider angle shot or soemthing. The grass seem soft. Was a tripod used here? Pity also about the houses roofs. Woudl be nicer if they were out of vision.
this appears to be or have some slight HDR done on it...that guess given...you did a good job with this it's not over the top and yet I can still focus on the simplicity of the tree.
This is nice with the exception of the large black cloud to the upper left, which completely dominates the picture and makes the tree more of a secondary element. I think if you had just cropped this a bit more off the top it would have improved it for me.