I'm not offended in the least by either of your critiques and I think you both hit the nail on the head all around. As mentioned, I had no interest in defending this image and clearly it is an image with a bunch of issues, all of which you have clearly and thoughtfully addressed.

I particularly enjoy (and always learn something from) these "pass around" editing exercises and it seems like they tend to generate more actual photography discussion, which I think is why we're all here. Hopefully others will benefit from the discussion and be encouraged to join in.

So, if one were to set out to make a great fall colors image, this would not be the way to do it. It was a hand-held shot in terrible conditions and in fact, the next day almost all those leaves fell to the ground so even the overall timing was bad. If I had shifted the orientation to include more of the road down there you guys would have choked on the ugly white double-wide and old broken down rusted out truck off to the side.

None the less, while taking an end of the day stroll up that dirt road, and in spite of the appalling conditions, I was captivated by the Aspen leaning out over the road with such immense detail in the depths between and behind them. But you guys immediately saw my mistake (the mistake that can't be blamed on the poor conditions) and it was the kind of mistake that I know I'm prone to make, especially if I'm rushing or just not focused, and a lot of people make the same mistake.

And it was all about your notion, Roman, of walking the scene first to find what is interesting about it and only then start tweaking and fiddling to capture exactly what's best about it. I knew what interested me about the scene, but when I went to shoot it I quickly substituted a whole other set of criteria that had to do with framing the scene to contain as much of the yellow leaves as possible while avoiding the objectionable stuff further down the road. And as a result I ended up with something completely different from what actually attracted me to that scene! So I really appreciate both of your thoughtful observations and hopefully, as a result, I'll be less likely to make that sort of mistake in the future.

As an aside, Roman, I like your objective rating system and I advocate the same approach in my main area of photography, studio shots of custom knives for publication. See here: http://www.customknifecollectorsassociation.com/forumsv3/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=31 What we measure improves, but only if we measure it.

And finally, I too re-edited the above scene which I'll toss in here even though we all agree (I assume) that no amount of post-processing can save an image that was ill conceived to start with. In addition to some of the things you guys did in your edits, I used the lens correction filter to alter the perspective a bit. It turned out to be a lateral move with no net gain - just different.



Thanks again, guys!