Alone in woods

Mike, I like the peaceful feeling of the photograph. I think the tree trunks on the far left and right of the frame box in the image a bit. Delicate burning of the areas surrounding the subject tree, perhaps with a low contrast filter, might help pop it out a bit. If the burns are feathered in from the edges, it might create a greater sense of depth.
All the best,
Daniel

I agree with Daniel, you want to get the subject tree to pop just a bit with some careful burning around the tree.You might also crop out the two trees on the left and right. They seem a bit distracting, pulling my eyes away from the subject tree. Nice quiet image.

I'm not sure I agree with the suggestion of cropping the trees at the edges of the neg - they add to the sense of this little tree being "surrounded" by the larger trees. Either approach would work, I think, but the "mood" of the image would be substantially different.

You might try split filtration, using a lower contrast for the overall exposure to bring out more detail in the trunks, dodging a bit on the central tree, and then burn-in the central tree a bit with a higher contrast to get the "pop".

Thank you all for your input. When I initially set up this shot I considered eliminating the left and right trees from the frame. however, as Ralph said, i thought including them would help emphasize the clearing.

I think I will try all of your suggestions though and see what happens. Thanks again for your help!

Happy holidays
Mike

Caught this in random images. Another tree picture. With snow. Yay. Very delicate. Nice.