This image is all about the patterns (faces?) . The pattern is made up from reflections of rocks at the bottom of a clear mountain creek.
All feedback is very welcome
The image is cropped from a larger image and contrast and saturation are increased.
Hi Johan,
I love making these kinds of water abstract images and viewing them, and I’m really enjoying this one. Definitely some faces in there, but also just a pleasure to take it in without trying to make “sense” out of it. I also like the way my eyes move around the image–there are interesting finds scattered everywhere in the ripple textures and colors.
A lot of the choices for handling color, brightness and contrast in a scene like this are going to be based a lot on personal preference and not necessarily on staying true to things as seen. One thing I do notice is that the brightness in the image is fairly well distributed other than the ULC, where it’s significantly darker. I think opening that up some with dodging or whatever method you’d use could bring more balance to the image, making it look “flatter” and even more abstract. I did a quick job of this in Photoshop, just as a illustration of one possible direction (I almost exclusively use Lightroom, so I’m using this partly as an exercise to learn PS techniques). I also cooled down and decreased the highlights, trying to neutralize the warmth there and make things a little less contrasty overall. These are just personal tastes/ideas. Interested in what you and others think.
Lovely image!
Johan,
FUN! Love this abstract. Knowing now that we’re looking at stones under water, I can see it… But FACES it is! I see Bart Simpson, Casper the Friendly Ghost, an Extra Terristrial and a golden man… i’m sure more if I keep looking.
I like your post in terms of the color, contrast and saturation. I do agree somewhat on Jack’s comment suggestion about the darker area making things a little unbalanced.
As @Jack_Krohn says it is all about personal choice and preference. And while I like your version Jack, I think I’d darkent it back down - but keep the UL area more in line with the rest ofthe image.
This one has lots of intrigue Johan. Really loving this! Thanks for sharing!
Lon
Thanks a lot @Jack_Krohn and @Lon_Overacker for your nice comments and suggestions. I will for sure try to even the light out and experiment with the overall brightness.
Hey @Johan_Lennartsson! I’m with the others that this is a very nice image, really interesting to look at - and I look at a lot of water abstracts! This is a scene where I would have felt compelled to shoot a hundred frames.
Totally agree with Jack that the UL was pretty distractingly dark - but that’s just in relation to the rest of the image. If you like a darker or contrastier feel, as Lon was getting at, you could do the local adjustments to bring up those deep shadows in the UL - but then bring the global black point back down, or darken the midtones overall, just to give it that tonal depth without losing the luminous highlights.
I would also consider dimming some of the bright highlights that run along the edges all around (I use the term “dimming” instead of darkening because I’m really only talking about highlights and I wouldn’t want to see mids/darks lowered too). That’s also something that should be done carefully on a pattern shot, because vignetting that comes too far in “breaks” the pattern and makes the edges look dingy. So I keep it to just very small slivers along the edge in shots like this.
Lastly, the orange in the LRC, though it contrasts nicely with the blue, is a bit too close to the edge of the frame to be that saturated and different, IMO. I would lower saturation on that, and if you want to have more oranges to play off the blues, maybe saturate some of the more centralized warm spots.
This is a really nice image and quite pleasing to look at. Nicely done!
Hello @Alex_Noriega ! Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comments. I really appreciate them and will reedit this image with your and other comments in mind and see what comes out of it. I think it will be improved.
