Still working at photographing the thorniness in my neighborhood. Today is an agave in front of my neighbor’s house. Worked with a combination of a sketch action and luminosity masks to get this look.
My goal here is to not completely lose the photographic character of the image, but wonder if I maybe pushed too far into sketch territory on this one.
Is this a composite: No
This image is also focus-blended for sharpness.
Tony …its all about light, color, shades, contrast, composition, …all done to perfection.
Top class,
Balan Vinod
A beautiful, striking, graphic image.
Superb!!! Too far? No way!! You have brought out the character of the agave so beautifully.
Tony
This is awesome! Love the colors and depth!
I love the greens on this one. And the shapes these leaves creates a great contrast to the softness of the tones. The tones are soft, the shapes are sharp, very intriguing.
The blues on the crest of the leaves is gorgeous but (IMO) seems a bit off, even going in the sketch look i would tone down the blues, or ease the transition maybe.
Cheers
Tony, your “thorn” views are very inviting with an excellent range of subtle colors and great sharpness. The strong contrast between the petal edges and their bodies looks good.
Nice contrast between round leaves and their sharp thorns. I like metallic gradation of green leaves too.
I agree with what Balan said. The light and colors are the stars of this image. Striking!
Tony: I have really enjoyed your B&W work with your thornies but this is far and away my favorite. My eye was bouncing from one great element to the next and the color palette is marvelous. Spectacular image IMO 
>=))>
I really like the light, range of colors and comp, but I will go it alone and say I am not really liking the look of it being a painting, which I assume is the sketch action? Definitely is too strong for my tastes, but as noted, I am the outlier on this one.
Superb, Tony. It does have a feel of an animation cell but as to whether you’ve “pushed it too far” … compared to what? You know as well as I do that there are an infinite number of ways to post process an image. But what you’ve done here is so good - can’t take my eyes off it.
