He caught her before school, in the parking lot. "I'm sorry, baby," he told her, pushing a bouquet of multi-colored roses into her hands. She stared at them sadly for a moment before she flushed hot with anger in icy cold, fling them violently into a pile of dirty, melting snow where they landed with an audible thud. "You think you can buy me off with flowers, you jerk? You think that makes up for what you did with that slut after the dance last week?! How.. how DARE YOU!" She turned and stomped on the bouquet. "I never want to see you again!" Fighting back tears, she clutched her books tight and hurried into the building just as the bell rang. He watched her leave through the freezing clouds of his breath. It would be a long, cold day.
These are a bunch of cheap spray roses from the grocery store, which I trampled and then threw onto a pile of dirty melting snow in the parking lot Saturday morning before Italian class. I showed up early just so I could do this in the morning light. I wanted to do something that was both literal and metaphorical, and also wanted to include as much color as a "Dirt" challenge could handle.
Screen and Luminance layers. Some desaturation, mostly in yellow channel but also some in master channel. Slid color balance into blue shadows and cyan highlights to cool the light and tone down the yellow. Layer masking to blur and darken non-essential areas and sharpen flowers. Spot sharpening on flowers.
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As usual, I have created something which requires the voters to stop and think, which in general seems to be something they don't like to do. I am disappointed that so many people seemed to not get this. This is what I'm guessing anyway, since only one commenter bothered to tell me they couldn't see the dirt - nevermind that the trampled, discarded bouquet was tossed onto a disgustingly filthy pile of snow JUST so the more literal minded among us wouldn't have much to complain about. Seriously, I'm a bit offended that anyone could imply this is DNMC - it's not exactly rocket science.
For DrAchoo, the object in the upper left is a parking lot stripe.
Statistics
Place: 53 out of 144 Avg (all users): 5.6919 Avg (commenters): 7.0000 Avg (participants): 5.5278 Avg (non-participants): 5.7965 Views since voting: 1629 Views during voting: 337 Votes: 185 Comments: 17 Favorites: 1 (view)
I love the creativity behind this shot. The image itself holds so much interest visually. The varying diagonal, vertical and horizontal lines lend it a dynamic quality, while the bright colors of the flowers against the neutral tones of the ground provide a satisfying vibrancy.
I loved it for this challenge - what a refreshing take on a dirty subject! And for the record, I recognized the parking lot stripe right away. Either I have a good monitor, or I happen to look at parking lots alot (which I do - the textures in those painted stripes can be fascinating in their own way.) Nice work; ignore scores.
Well. .I missed voting on this one during the challenge, but I love it! And I'm sure I would have voted it very high. I thought and thought about how to make "dirt" somehow beautiful and touching. I couldn't come up with a thing -- but you sure have!
I really like your image and the emotion it depicts.
I think your score suffered, because on some monitors (mine included) it is not clear that the white area is dirty snow. It looks to me like white fluff or down from a pillow on top of some dark earth. This is not meant to be a criticism, just pointing out the difficult circumstances here at DPC that often affect our scores.
Hey, I just thought of something. This reminds me of Paul McCartney's album, Flowers In The Dirt. I think your photograph is better than his album cover! You should be proud that you could create such a vivid, living image and still get a high 5 from DPC.
Took me a moment to figure out the title. I really like this entry. Very creative. Is this at a cemetery? Or, what is the thing at the top right? I hope you didn't have to break all those beautiful little roses just for this picture, that would be a shame. Is that ice? ~9
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