Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
Does this work as an abstract?
Does it remind you of something else? If so, what?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
This is a crop from an agave leave image, and I really liked the texture of the cameo effect these leaves have on each other as the grow and branch out.
Technical Details
Canon 5DIV with 24-105mm at 105mm
ISO 400, f/11, 1/250sec
Specific Feedback
Is the vertical orientation too much?
Is it too soft at the top? I think the curve of the leaf took it off square, which even at f/11 made a difference.
Marylynne: I love it when someone works a subject as thoroughly and expertly as you’ve done with your Agave. I like the comp and of course the color palette. The dynamism of the ICM shots is perhaps lacking here but the upward movement implied here works really well for me. Top notch image here and a very fine series.>=))>
A very cool Agave image, Marylynne. To my eye,it looks like a very nasty spear point except the barbs are pointed the wrong way and it ends in that blob at the tip instead of a point. Just for fun, I downloaded it and cloned it to a point, but then I inverted it and ended up with a whole different interpretation:
I like it, Dennis. I had a chain of blobs and cut it back to one. I like the idea of removing it altogether. I like the inverted approach too. I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t offend agave lovers!
ML
It sort of reminds me of an aerial shot I made on the way to shooting the eclipse – I haven’t done anything with it but maybe I’ll see if it’s presentable – as it were…
Thanks everyone. The more I think about it, the more I like the inverted variation here. I might clone out the tip of the spear so it doesn’t leave the frame, but here I tried a shorter crop to isolate the parts of the image that are sharpest (i.e. I crop off the bottom and top, where the curve of the leaf too the plane of focus off square and led to some softness). This also removed a few dark spots near the edges of the frame.
Let me know if this is more to your liking and whether the spear leaving the frame at the bottom is a problem or perhaps creates the impression of something rising up and spreading rather than coming down and stabbing.
I like it Marylynne. However, the more I look at the inverted one the more it reminds me of an old fashioned ruffled shirt front peaking through the coat.
Interesting Dennis. The first was a Christmas tree with a peace dove on top. I don’t really want it to resemble much of anything. Perhaps rotating it horizontally like another one I did recently will do the trick.
ML
