Lithodora and poppies and Repost

[Dennis_Plank]

Repost:

Original:

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

I’m not sure whether this belongs in Floral or Abstract as it’s a combination of two images. My wife has good sized beds of both Lithodora and California poppies, and I got down low to put the blue in the foreground with the poppies above them. I shot a number of images, some with both completely out of focus, some with part the lithodora in focus and some with the leading edge of the poppies in focus. I likes some of those, but it occurred to me that it might be interesting to try combining the completely out of focus image with one of the others. I ended up using the “Screen” blending mode then adding a bit of dehaze after taking it back into LR.

Specific Feedback

Does this work on any level for you?

Technical Details

Both images taken with a Sony A7Rv and FE 70-200 f/4 macro at 179 mm, tripod, f/5.6, 1/2000, iso 640. Processed independently, then I cropped and resized the larger resulting image to match the smaller of the two After most of the processing, I decided I wanted to put a bit more orange at the top, so I recropped and added a bit of canvas using content aware fill. Both images taken May 22nd around 10:30 a.m. under a moderate haze.

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[Sandy_Richards-Brown]

Very cool! The colour combination works so well. The blurry “detail” creates a mystical, dreamy effect. DEFINITELY works!
As an alternate, more of a pano crop, with a little more on top and less on the bottom,
might work well.
Kind of like this ?

[Don_Peters]

Dennis, I like the poppies very much.

The blurred blue flowers take up a lot of the frame and don’t offer anything to look at. I think it would be better if they took up less of the frame. I’m not generally fond of pano crops but I think Sandy has the right idea.

[Dennis_Plank]

Thanks @Sandy_Richards-Brown and @Don_Peters. Something went wrong with my recrop that did have less blue and more orange. I don’t know how I managed to avoid saving and exporting it. Anyhow, here’s a repost with a revised version-probably not the same as the first change, but close enough.

[Sandy_Richards-Brown]

Nice repost! Much better !

[Diane_Miller]

Very cool!! The RP works for me! Neat idea!

[Bill_Fach]

Dennis: Oh this is fine! Reminds me of the “crammed” images that were so popular on the old NPN many years ago. I do prefer the repost. Wonderful color palette and the shallow DOF that gives little snippets of sharp poppy petals works great for me. Superbly crafted image. >=))>

[Youssef_Ismail]

Dennis,

This is just fantastic. I love the relatively high key colors of the poppies, as they tend to be a bit deeper orange, at least when I see them. But I love the softness in the color and in the focus. If it was mine, I would have it printed big and in my booth at my weekly display.