Hillside Sunrise
by GeneralE

Comment by Neil:
Paul, I am sure your alternates would have done better just on the color wow factor alone. But I like this one better. Perhaps if you did a little more work with the sky. The darker clouds almost look like a defective/dirty area here. This is one of those that would do better with some more sky detail--the clouds are very faint here. Maybe they could have been brought out with PP, maybe not.

Hillside Sunrise
by GeneralE

Comment by GeneralE:
I guess I should have submitted one of the "enhanced" versions instead of this virtually unprocessed one, which I thought was my best "pure photograph" of the month.

First alternate: Second alternate:

Peacemeal
by GeneralE

Comment by Cutter:
fairly straightforward, without any composition, color or subject matter to hold lasting appeal. But it is a clever concept.

Painted Lady
by GeneralE

Comment by GeneralE:

Originally posted by train: This looks stunning why didnt you crop it in to gets rid of the distactions of the back ground Its quite hard to focus on the actual image of the flower and butterfly Detail is great just that background is not

I have been trying to concentrate on my camera skills and not editing, so I've been submitting a lot of uncropped shots just to see how successful my composition has been. I was actually very happy to achieve the DOF/bokeh effect, as it's hard to do with this camera. I like the riotous colors, though they do provide camouflage, they also mimic/mirror the colors of the subject.

Another consideration is that this is only a 3MP original -- cropping would probably limit me to 5x7 prints, even with a border.

I can try fading the BG to make the butterfly pop out a bit more, and maybe I'll try a vertical crop as well -- thanks for the sugggestion.

Painted Lady
by GeneralE

Comment by Konador:
Really nice vibrant colours and a really good use of DoF. 8

Dances With Dinos
by GeneralE

Comment by yourbuddyjhawk:
This needs work because it seems just as a snapshot and took no photographic.

Dances With Dinos
by GeneralE

Comment by sukuriant:
Maybe if the picture was longer exposure so the DOF was higher with an indirect flash?

Nice concept :-D

Painted Lady
by GeneralE

Comment by sherpet:
Lovely macro.....

Panorama in 4:3
by GeneralE

Comment by kteach:

Originally posted by GeneralE: Originally posted by kteach: I'm not sure if I like the overall lack of color since it keeps it consistent with the sign, or if I would like to see more color in the top half. Creative shot and perfect for the challenge. Nicely done. There really wasn't any color in the original -- it was a gray,hazy day and this view is at least partly backlit. At first I tried it in a warm sepia-like look, but though it gave the sky a nice glow, it made the concrete and the sign (the real subject) look a little funny, so I switched to a Black/Cyan duotone for that cooler, foggy look.

I understand that gray, hazy day stuff, yuck! I can't picture this in sepia tones at all...so this was probably your best choice then. No matter what the colors, I still think it's a cool shot :)

Panorama in 4:3
by GeneralE

Comment by mycelium:
I tried a couple of things to bring out the dynamic range in this image... for Basic Editing, Adding a Channel Mixer at 120/-10/-10 definitely brought out the contrast a bit more; the image could be re-duotoned from that. For Advanced Editing, duplicating the layer, setting to Multiply mode, and adding a white-black-white vertical gradient added a nice sense of richness to the image, and helped out the sky a lot. In both cases I finished up with a USM at 60%, .3 radius, 0 threshold.

I'm another member of the crowd that thinks that this is a good picture and conceptually strong, just not presented quite as well as it might have been.