POTM [09/08] Yellow & Blue

[zabe]

Hey everybody!!

I'm back!! I had no time to post something for last month's POTM... This month, I had a real hard time looking for blue things (other than the sky ) and in the end I opted for doing something different than the most obvious (which would be focusing on the "blue"). Thus, I went for contrast, and got some nice pics of yellow flowers, then equalized the histogram to get those blues in the background and decreased the contrast a little bit (corelPP made it a little too contrasty for my taste)... and voila!! I'm still going for the blue, but with a twist: it's more of a "contrasting blue" theme for me this month. I know that with some better technique than what I possess the colors could be better, but I've tried my best... and I think it looks pretty cool!!

Comments are more than welcome, as always!!

[akpoly]

The magenta is a bit too saturated for my taste but its a nice picture. Weird little bugs on the stem is what made me interested.

[Firehed]

It seems a tiny bit soft but otherwise I quite like it. The blue/purple and yellow have great contrast and the angle/framking are well done. The closest flower in the background right at the bottom of the shot is a tiny bit distracting given its size, but that's fairly minor to be honest.

[ssR]

i like it as far as composition goes. the colors are very intense and the bugs add to the overall impression. like firehed said the floower at the bottom is a little bit distracting but otherwise its a good pic

[OleJ]

Agreed with what has been said so far. Good shot.
As mentioned before the magenta is a bit too saturated. I'm seeing more yellow/purple than yellow/blue. And it does indeed seem a bit soft.
In all it works well and the cropping is good.

[Da Dego]

On the crappy dell monitor I have here at work, it's very blue - I wonder if that could be part of the problem? You may want to look at color calibration, zabe. If the photo guys see purple but you see a blue (like I do on this monitor), you may just be slightly off. Either that, or check your color range before the JPEG conversion in photoshop - I know that Firefox does some weird things to AdobeRGB at times, for instance.

Aside from that, the image is a little soft as Eric's mentioned, but I absolutely love the composition and the color choice. As far as theme goes, I think this was a great "out of the box" take on it and it created a very attractive image. I'm drawn to the yellow flower instantly but I find myriad little details just outside of it to keep me interested.

All in all, great job!

[zabe]

Originally Posted by Firehed

The closest flower in the background right at the bottom of the shot is a tiny bit distracting given its size, but that's fairly minor to be honest.

Originally Posted by ssR

the floower at the bottom is a little bit distracting but otherwise its a good pic

I'm trying to take it out of the picture but I'm not very confident in my editing skills (I pretty much suck), we'll see if I'm capable of doing it nicely before the deadline, if not what I have now will have to do...

Originally Posted by akpoly

The magenta is a bit too saturated for my taste but its a nice picture.

Originally Posted by OleJ

As mentioned before the magenta is a bit too saturated.

I did try to eliminate more magenta but I saw absolutely no difference in my screen. Then I tried giving the blue more impact but that ruined the flower's color, turning it greenish, which didn't look nice at all... I'm more used to work with ps cs3, but I just switched to vista x64 and stupid Adobe don't support x64 yet (unbelievable, and not to mention flash player for the web...) so I'm working with photopaint x4 until cs4 is out, but corel is unfamiliar territory for me and tweaking pics is difficult right now...

Originally Posted by Da Dego

On the crappy dell monitor I have here at work, it's very blue - I wonder if that could be part of the problem?
...I find myriad little details just outside of it to keep me interested...

I´d go with you Da Dego, my crappy dell laptop's monitor is probably off color-wise. Then again, I have no idea as to how to calibrate it or if it even show better colors (I'm asuming that given it's laptop LCD nature it's probably very limited).

Originally Posted by akpoly

Weird little bugs on the stem is what made me interested.

Don't you just love the little ants? I love them!! Notice how there's a bunch of them in the lower part, and only a few in the top... it feels like the strongest are the ones who managed to "conquer" the flower!!

[Shadowed_fury]

I like it a lot, ants are ace