Mixing colors of opposite ends in mood spectrum is one of subject to study. A fine image here Adithya. I would think a bit more of warmer tones can balance the domination of cold ? Unless you wanted it that way. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, Ganesh mixing these two ends was very challenging. I have many compositions with various amount of mist and light. I will check other compos and put it on illustration forum.

here is another composition.

Adithya I liked the one in the illustration forum, I think that one conveys your thoughts better than this one, very difficult to keep the balance in these kind of images and I think you have made a great attempt. I am sure you will try out many other conditions with the same thoughts in mind. Very challenging to do it in one shot, interestingly I have been wondering for a couple of months why is it called digital manipulation if we shoot 2 different shots and then blend them ? Suppose the same situation as yours where one shot would be made using a cooler temperature and the other a warmer one and then we only take half from each and join them to convey our thoughts, what's wrong with that ? Is there anything called manipulation in any other form of art ? People are using knives instead of brush while painting, using a canvas with both oil and acrylic and in fact expanding possibilities, why is it that when we try to do something like that in photography, the world begins to shout about honesty ? Pretty silly actually. If I can find out ways to create an image using multiple exposure creatively even getting one scene from here and the other from another direction, how does it amount to manipulation ? Am just wondering who decides this ? BBC does ? Then to hell with them as they can not tell me how my art needs to be created. Hate this guideline thing in life. I hear so often people asking, was this image created using Photoshop ? Now am sure that most people who have no knowledge about art or photography think that photoshop is a machine or a button where you press it and an art work is created. I do not see it as my job to even give clarifications to these kind of people. I think Adithya, what you have in mind can be either done better with multiple exposure or two images made in different WB and then selectively joined. I would in fact suggest, keep the left part of the frame to do the story. For one part the frame remains normal and the other part shot in different WB just invert it. That way the visual symmetry might look very interesting, same branches with tonal difference. What do you think ?

I agree with you on digital art Nilanjan.
I have observed in many other photography forums- which are non nature- all the creations made out of photos are called photos. People blend many many photos to create one image. No one hesitates to call it as art or photography.

In fact, this is not a digital invention, even before the digital era it was practiced by many people, but now the process has become easier. Here is one such example.
I too have attempted some of them, Here is one of them.
Here is one more.

In all the above cases we only think whether the photo is good, whether the art is meaningful and not whether it is manipulated or not.

This digital art is not easy to create. One needs to have tremendous knowledge about colors, tone, depth, composition etc. Many think that applying some preset filters in PS like Water color, charcoal etc make their photo into digital art. But in reality it is not so. They apply some coded rules to all the images put into them. Where does one's self lyes s there?

Coming back to nature photography, I think problem (if we can call it so) lyes in whole in the approach itself. Nature photography basically deals (or was dealing) with documentation. Most of us started taking the nature photos to document the nature/wildlife we saw, and not to create art out of it or to represent our own deep emotions through it. May be we need to come out of that mood. I am very much happy to make the images as you suggested, I don't have any objections about that. [But I may not post them on CNP as CNP has it's own set of rules. Being a person who believes in hierarchy I respect the rules set by the moderators.]

But then again I like to make the images on the field rather than trying it off the field. To me photography is not just the final image. It's a process starting from waking early in the morning and ends with hitting save as... I love to lye on the field, glued to viewfinder for hours, getting mud on my clothes, getting scold by the spouse for not being in the home...I fear I may loose these 'luxuries' if I choose to do it off the field. Also I will miss the serendipity involved in the photography.
I would like to quote our Nirlep' words from the article An absurdity called a photography (sorry Nirlep for misinterpreting your article again and again. "Leaving aside some assignments where there is time for a photographer to pre-visualize, most of the photography work comes as a surprise to the photographer. There is a strong element of serendipity involved in this pursuit"

I had posted an image of a spider and dew drops to clarify my thoughts. In that image I was trying to make some high key B/W image of a spider and the dew drops. But after taking the image I noticed that thee were colored drops due to the refraction. If I had choose to make the high key B/W images using one of old dew drops image I would have definitely lost an entirely different image.

" [But I may not post them on CNP as CNP has it's own set of rules. Being a person who believes in hierarchy I respect the rules set by the moderators.]"........... I didn't really know that CNP had a set of rules Adithya, every different human can have a different vision of his approach. When I said multiple exposure or blending of two images to you, I kept two things in mind. Multiple exposure can be a in camera thing, well now I know that it's for nikon users only, but the same image and idea can be conceived by a canon user too. If he makes two images and then selects two different areas and combines them to create a single canvas, I would very much give credit to the photographer. The end result for me is due to his or her vision. But if a person uses a photoshop filter like paint or charcoal etc to create art that definitely would be digital art and will be beyond the scope of CNP. I do not think blending images can be beyond scope of CNP. If you talk to Ashwini, Shiv or Pramod, they will tell how photographers spend so much time to make multiple depth of field images and also use the hyperfocal distance to create amazing landscapes. Even photo stitching to create a pano is such a beautiful art. All these result from visualization, but converting an image to a painting by a filter is not a vision made in the field. I feel CNP is very open to ideas, at least to my understanding from my in depth discussions with Ganesh. There is a stupid rule by BBC for their contest which says one is allowed to make multiple exposure image but not allowed to change the frame . Well for contests I can understand there can be guidelines due to various factors. CNP is more about a culture which promotes new vision, it does not have a syllabus with the moderators sitting there as head of the departments looking at how well people are adhering to the purity of the medium. Some moderators themselves might not agree to some images, their expressions and visions are the same as that of other members of the forum. Hence I feel there is no hierarchy here, if there is, then am afraid art will surely take a back seat. Till date, I have not seen them trying to tell anybody what is right or what is wrong, they might have just communicated whether they like an image or not and it is completely ok, isn't it ? I have myself too commented negatively on images which I felt lost balance in human-nature images and took a tilt towards human more. I am no moderator and neither would I want to be . Come on Adithya, we are all trying create new visions here, the goal is not awards, the goal is not to get a 10 or 9 in the rating as well. It takes so many failures to develop a positive mind and by positive mind I mean a mind which does not think there are restrictions imposed on him or her. I think my suggestion to you about creating two shots with warm and cool color temperature and then selectively cut out portions and stitch them very well lies within photographic purity if I may call it. What are you distorting here ? Nothing I guess, but giving shape to imagination exploiting different steps of photography. Digital art is a very different subject and I do not have much idea about it just because I have never spent time on it, but of course you are 100% correct, it arises from vision. Since its a different subject it is out of scope of CNP perhaps ( you have to check with the mods about it ) but blending and multiple exposure is not. Remember that lovely image by Shankar Kiragi in Kodachadri ? The leaves of the tree right on top of his head and he created it so casually while joking and chatting with us, how can that be digital art. He would have made it with a film camera too . Many a times I have heard people saying digital vs film, I only tell them heyy, it's not a war out there man. It's nothing like digital is allowing what could not be done during film days. Think of the processing called SOLARIZATION, that was so popular during film days and so well appreciated, if somebody does it now to his file, it would be called digital art. In fact things have got tougher and not easier in my opinion. People have become very judgmental. Two good things with digital are that more images can be shared and the CF card can be reused , what else has changed ? Nothing. If someone thinks that selecting a preset of silver efex pro will make an excellent black and white image, then there is something very wrong with such thinking. One still needs to understand the use of red, blue and green filters while making a good black and white conversion, yes, the hands do not get wet now, the studio does not get messy. Rest is all the same. Professionals always used to make multiple frames of the same shot keeping conditions similar, just for the fact that if one negative gets spoiled and does not provide the desired result, then the next same slide or negative would help to achieve that. We get to work on the RAW file from the scratch, but the ideas remain the same, only resources and some procedures have changed. Don't you agree ?
Sacha is a very good example, he knows or visualizes how he wants his canvas to look finally, accordingly he exploits the camera use and the processing support. His images though look so different are perfect photographic end results. Let us not impose too much on ourselves Adithya , we know what is right and what is wrong, so honesty and satisfaction is in our reach. Hope I could explain my thoughts more clearly.....

I think there is a confusion from my side. When I was referring digital art and said I may not post them in CNP in my mind I had the image I posted on Flickr not the multiple exposure or blended images.