This image is in fact a spillover out of my captures for the calendar of a nature preservation organization. It did't make it into the final selection – simply because it could be attributed to almost every of the reservations we wanted to portray. So I kept it in my archive for many years until the first publication – here for all you Shuttermonkeys.
I like this photo a lot. The tree with the elephant trunk shape is so interesting and I love the diagonal line if makes that brings one into the photo. The only thing I don't care much for is the patch of blue near the base of the trunk. It pulls your eye away from the line of the branch. I think that I would pick up the clone stamp and cover that patch of blue with a little of the greenery so it wasn't so prominent.
Thanks, Frances, for your fair and interesting comment. I agree that I could clonestamp away that blue. But I began making pictures in the sixties and have lived to see the work of (and in two cases even to learn personally from) some real cracks in photojournalism, where manipulating an image other than editing tones and colors are strictly forbidden. This attitude still has some influence even when editing landscapes. For instance, I will never ever replace a sky in my pictures - either I can wait until the sky «looks at me», or I will leave the spot without the capture I have in mind.
@Chris Hilbrand That is true of photojournalism but has never been true of artistic images. As I'm sure you know, Ansel Adams and his contemporaries did a great deal of editing to their film. So I am a believer in enhancing images to make them more like I felt when taking the image. It is quite a different thing when taking an image for the New York Times or Washington Post of a war, crime or fire. Just my opinion.