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The Lone Red Flower
The Lone Red Flower
kellyrc01


Photograph Information Photographer's Comments
Challenge: Selective Desaturation II (Advanced Editing V)
Camera: Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 II
Location: Austin, Texas
Date: May 17, 2007
Aperture: F20
ISO: 800
Shutter: 1/60
Galleries: Floral
Date Uploaded: May 19, 2007

 Taken while the sun was setting, there were a patch of red flowers, and a patch of white ones, so I picked a red flower & placed it in with the white ones.

Statistics
Place: 489 out of 556
Avg (all users): 4.7798
Avg (commenters): 6.0000
Avg (participants): 4.6705
Avg (non-participants): 5.2000
Views since voting: 710
Views during voting: 287
Votes: 218
Comments: 4
Favorites: 0

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AuthorThread
 06/07/2007 01:18:52 PM
Interesting - the B&W portion of the image came out so well, I don't want any of it in color! :) The veins in the front flower are an amazing capture. This came out so well in B&W that the color ruins it. If anything, I might crop some of the left off to avoid that distraction.

Thinking a bit, if you wanted one red flower, I almost would have pulled back a bit so the one red flower stood out against a large section of bush. This close-up needs to be all B&W.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 06/02/2007 11:51:33 PM
Greetings from the Critique Club

My first impression looking at this photo was that the red flower didn't really belong. So I wasn't surprised to see your comment that you placed it there. It looks unnatural. But that isn't really important; photos, even flower photos, don't necessarily have to look natural. It depends on what message the photographer wants to get across. And this photo is attractive. The red flower does stand out, and makes the viewer wonder why it's there. There is no correct answer; the viewer gets to decide for himself. That's a hallmark of good art.

Now I want to disagree with Steve's critique a bit! Don't be frustrated by our disagreement; this is all subjective, and that's what makes art interesting!

I like the highly saturated red. The color amidst the gray already draws attention to it, and the intensity, well, intensifies this. I think it works very well. And I also like the reddish reflection; it helps the red flower blend in. Cloning it out makes the red flower look even more unnatural. (Of course, if that's your goal, go for it!) But there is a very light bluish hue on the petals behind and above the red flower that looks out of place; I do suggest removing it. (I would recommend using a layer mask on a hue/saturation layer rather than cloning to do this.)

While the soft focus is certainly fitting, these flowers have such a wonderful texture that I would prefer it sharper. A bit of sharpening to bring out the details would really enhance this.

But I do agree with Steve's recommendation to crop off the left side. That would better balance the composition.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 05/30/2007 02:22:57 PM
Positives:
A decent floral desat in a soft focus mode with a supportive black and white background.

Technicals:
The black and white treatment has good tones and full range from pure black to pure white without under or over exposed areas. The color boundary to the B&W is well done. Nice idea to put a red flower with white ones... makes the desat part a lot easier to do.

Interesting this image is so softly focused given it is taken at f/20, perhaps this is because you were in macro mode or possibly camera motion suring the 1/60th second exposure. It has those spotty areas that look slightly out-of-focus which is incompatible with actual distance that we sometimes see with digital images. Not sure how that happens but think it is an artifact of digital image capture.

The red is a little too intense for the composition. Looks like you might have saturated it in post processing. The reddish refelction on the white flower below the red acts as a distraction.

The composition is on the weak side, kinda snapshot-like.

The Challenge:
It meets the challenge but most voters probably thought it a gratuitous floral image so voted it lower. Voters probably wanted to see a reason for the use of desat and did not find it in this composition. Others probably felt it lacked the ever popular "wow" factor so voted it lower for that as well. Some voters may have thought the reddish reflection off the white flower below the red one was color bleeding and marked it down as a technical error. All those reasons combined are probably why it scored below average.

I scored this image 6. That means I felt it was below average but not a "failure". I felt the image was OK but the red was to intense and the reddish reflection on the white flower was a distracting flaw. In my opinion your picture is not "bad". If it were I'd have given it an even lower score than the average DPCer did. I usually vote the "bad" pictures lower than other DPCers and the "good" ones higher.

Suggestions:
Here are some things you might try. Reduce the overall saturation of the red flower so it doesn't hit the viewer over the head then use selective color to darken just the blacks in the red flower to give it more contrast and definition. Clone out the red color from the white flower.

Another thing you might consider is cropping it differently to center the red flower at one of the rule of thirds(ROT) intersection points for greater visual impact. Cropping a lot from the left side to position the red flower centered on the upper left ROT intersection might look quite nice.
  Photographer found comment helpful.
 Comments Made During the Challenge
05/21/2007 12:50:31 AM
needs more focus
  Photographer found comment helpful.


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