These Parish’s poppies on the wall of a small canyon of Anza Borrego State Park caught my eye right away. I have been wrestling off an on for a long time to get the image to come together. Darkening the light red and tan granite a lot, and letting the poppies stand out seems to be the right answer for me, at least to date.
All feedback very welcome
I like this photograph especially the way my eye follows the poppies up and around. It is a deceptively complex image. It appears to be some yellow poppies in among red rock. But you have been very intentional about the shadows and both how they frame and lead the eye - from the middle of the frame at the bottom, around to the left and then right over to the right hand side of the frame. Still, I find the image overly dark in the sense of underexposed. I would be inclined to bring the mid tone contrast up or maybe just a mid tone brightening. I know you want the poppies to, well, pop, but I don’t think that would be undermined with pulling up the mid tones.
I like how the poppies lead the eye up through the scene. I agree with Kerry on the image being on the dark side. I think brightening the overall scene will also make the poppies pop.
This is definitely a complex scene. But I think your composiiton has arranged the rock and poppies very nicely, and creates nice movement of the viewers eyes throughout the scene. Beyond the poppies, the strong diagonal lines in the rocks create a lot visual interest, and the texture in the rocks is quite nice as well. All of the elements within the scene feel at harmony with each other.
I do agree with @Kerry_Gordon that the mid-tones look underexposed, to the point where the colors have gone muddy in the rocks. I think you can lift mid-tones in the rocks here without taking attention away from the flowers. Here is my stab at doing that.
@Kerry_Gordon @Ed_McGuirk @Eva_McDermott
You guys nailed it. You’re hired!
Ed’s revision has a lot more pleasantness than the darker original, and adds to the texture-based visual interest.
I was struggling with the image, finding it did not quite look right with its lighting, and then viewed Ed’s version. That solved the issue. Works well.
