Another image from 2018 was this brittle brush closeup from an area near the Sand to Snow National Monument and more specifically the southern most entrance at the White-Water area. The previous year rains brought out an abundance of brittle brush covering a vast 5 mile area of the main canyon in the lower desert here in So Cal.
Mamiya RB67 ProSD - Mamiya C 140mm macro - Velvia 50
This is a real nice image of a great flower display. I am on the fence about the large deep shadow area bottom middle. Either open it up a bit or crop to above the group of bright blooms lower left? Not sure. Regardless, very enjoyable viewing with this one.
I love the color and the pattern of the flowers. I think if you opened up the darks, this would be even better, Paul.
–P
@Harley_Goldman @Preston_Birdwell
Thank you both for the reviews, comments, and suggestions. Been awhile since I worked on this one. I probably had the thought of maybe keeping things a bit dark in the BG area in hopes of providing more focus on the yellow flowers…
In the end these brittle brush are fairly sparse in floral covering and there are a lot of open gaps. But, as you both know, we take’m as we get’m…
Superb depth of field, Paul, and a lovely clump of flowers. The dark background areas don’t bother me in this image, but I the two clumps of flowers on the top edge seem to have been shaded and I think a bit of extra light on them might add some additional pop to the image.
Love the colors and detail of this field of flowers, Paul! I personally like the dark, shadow blue of the underbrush as it amplifies and separates the bright yellow flowers. I think bringing out details in the underbrush would only distract from the obvious subjects of this image. I do agree with Dennis though, that that one little bunch of flowers in the upper left could stand some extra brightening to balance the bunch in the lower right.
Paul, the flowers glow nicely here. There’s a fine mix of full and partial blooms. I could see a crop to square, to remove the dark patch at the bottom, but I think the strong contrast works well at letting the flowers pop.
Thank you all for your ideas on this image. I can see some changes that will certainly make a solid difference. One of the challenges for me is the vertical perspective. I rarely work on verticals. I rotated the image around and found it did not work at all or maybe my brain just finds this angle best. Anyway, if I get some more time later I’ll play around with this scene a bit more.
