Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: laughingbear on April 19, 2009, 06:39:14 am

Title: blue wind
Post by: laughingbear on April 19, 2009, 06:39:14 am

A recent article from Alain Briot on deliberate blur inspired me to experiment utilizing wind instead of camera movement.

Title: blue wind
Post by: dalethorn on April 19, 2009, 02:09:13 pm

Ultimately, every image stands on its own, and this one looks pretty good as is.  That said, there are still other possibilities here, for different crops, color, etc.  The overall simplicity lends itself to different interpretations.

Title: blue wind
Post by: kaelaria on April 19, 2009, 05:31:43 pm

I love the color, but would like to see more DOF.  Kind of gives me a headache.

Title: blue wind
Post by: Geoff Wittig on April 19, 2009, 06:55:49 pm

Quote from: laughingbear

A recent article from Alain Briot on deliberate blur inspired me to experiment utilizing wind instead of camera movement.

Lovely soft color; I really like it.
Almost reminds me of some of Scott Peck's photos of flowers frozen in ice.

Title: blue wind
Post by: laughingbear on April 19, 2009, 07:12:55 pm

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

@delathorn
Yeah, I am contemplating a couple of ideas concerning composition as well. Attached another Version.

@kelaria
As for DOF, I know what you mean, ahem, it was my second shoot with a macro lense, the first one were anthropods on the beach, and here I experimend with a gentle breeze and shot 30 or so frames until I got this particular one I was looking for, more or less that is. <grins> f2.0,  1/80sec. The dynamic of the breeze was my goal to capture, which ain't easy.

@Geoff
The color is something I am very found of in deed. To get that, I developed basics in LR, blacks up 35,little bit recovery, liner Tobe curve, no sharpening, no denoise and went to photoshop. There I pre sharpened, then applied gentle s-curve layer, but used blend mode of softlight with poacity of 40%, added b&w layer, blend mode to luminosity and played with the light until I saw fit, then rezised for web and final sharpening. - A pleasant first result for that experiment. - Not so pleasant is that my lense is fucked now, the iris doesn't close anymore, so far my first two days in the makro world, back to my other lenses. LOL <grmmmbl>

Title: blue wind
Post by: laughingbear on April 19, 2009, 07:35:44 pm

A few more, of somewhat different character from the same shooting. ... The last one is "dragon head" <grins>

Title: blue wind
Post by: dalethorn on April 20, 2009, 12:20:28 am

Quote from: laughingbear

Thanks a lot for your feedback!
@delathorn
Yeah, I am contemplating a couple of ideas concerning composition as well. Attached another Version.

This one is good too.  I went back and looked at the first one, and my immediate impression was of an object (flower) lurking in the background, as though it weren't ready to come out yet.  Of course it's "out" since you can obviously see the flower, but it's just an impression....

This latest I had a good impression of, as an object (flower) emerging from whatever it's emerging from below.  The fact that this "emerging" doesn't resemble a flower emerging in the normal way doesn't spoil the effect at all.

Title: blue wind
Post by: laughingbear on April 20, 2009, 08:03:40 am

Quote from: dalethorn

This latest I had a good impression of, as an object (flower) emerging from whatever it's emerging from below.

Yeah... the "dragon head".... It jumps right at you, doesn't it?  

I was thinking, plant's are somewhat "agressive species", they conquer their environment by all kinds of sophisticated strategies and evolution induced trickery, chemical warfare, deception, symbiosis etc. I remember a film I saw some time ago, forgot what tree it was, but it literally bombarded it's close surrounding with a chemical substance, "designed" to successfully erradicate another certain competing species. Within days, the competing species was erradicated and the tree stopped the production and distribution of the chemical substance. - Most fascinating! -

Did some test prints on Ultra Smooth Fine Art, very appealing to me eyes.

Title: blue wind
Post by: ProPhotoInsights on April 20, 2009, 10:37:24 am

Lovely colour and I love the shallow dof.
Personally I would not increase it but we all have our own tastes!
Simon

Title: blue wind
Post by: John R on April 21, 2009, 08:29:36 am

I prefer the vertical crop with less black in proportion to the flower. This is all a matter of tast, of course, and I think the first, square-like crop, has too much black, which to my eye, competes with the flower.

JMR

Title: blue wind
Post by: Hans Kruse on April 21, 2009, 11:44:38 am

Quote from: laughingbear

A recent article from Alain Briot on deliberate blur inspired me to experiment utilizing wind instead of camera movement.

I like the image and subject and DOF, but I find that the unsharp head of the flower (excuse my english  ) is too much inbetween sharp and unsharp. I think if that part was pinsharp and you had the movement in the rest as is, it would be great. Probably impossible to do....
Lovely tones, but the noise is slightly disturbing.