who is afraid of yellow bricks?by
PhileineComment by awpollard: Greetings from the Critique Club:
This is a nicely done, original and creative piece. It is a fun, yet intriguing picture to look at.
The choice to use a border for this shot was good one. In this case where there is no really no definable edge in the shot, without a border the desaturated area would run off the edges causing the shot to look flat.
The off center border is a very nice touch; there is a lot of geometry, hard edges, dimension and organized elements in this shot. IMO, by not having a centered border you make the viewer rethink the whole organization aspect. You have broken up the organization where every square that must be in a certain space isn̢۪t. You've shown some freedom in a very methodical shot. Throw the viewer off a bit, I like that.
I like the use of the colorized pieces in the border as opposed to a solid border. A solid border would have given this a harsh mechanical feel. However the border as it is, is very busy with a lot of detail of it's own that draws the viewer outward away from the subject.
My suggestion in this case (advanced editing challenge), would be to mask the current border, then apply just enough Gaussian Blur to the border to take any interest away from it. Apply blur to the point where you can just make out the edges of the circles and lines of the tiles in the border but don̢۪t go so far as to create a hard line between the border and gray area. This keeps the colorful warm feeling against the gray background but does not lure the eye outward. If you was to desaturate the border somewhere between the yellow tile and gray area, it would retain the detail and not effectivly push us inward.
The eye/brain combo really likes to take the easy way out most of the time. With an Out of focus border surrounding a desaturated background the viewer is going to immediately be attracted to the in focus brightly colored tile no matter where it is in the shot.
A slight softening of the desaturated area by decreasing the contrast would help to take some of the hard dark edges off of the desaturated tiles and further push the viewer to the Yellow tile.
This is very creative, well designed shot. Keep up the good work.
Andy
Photographer found comment helpful.
