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
I mostly want to know whether people find this interesting.
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 composite of two images. One is an array of saguaro cacti. The other is a rock wall covered with lichens. My goal was more of a “feel” than anything else.
Technical Details
The saguaros were shot at f/5.6, 1/320th sec.
Specific Feedback
Any feedback other than “technical” will be welcome.
Hi Don, yes, I find this very interesting. You have created a whole new world. Soft duo-colortones, an intriguing interplay of soft and stinging plants. It looks like you were on another planet that day.
Well done, give us more……
Don, this has an intriguing sense of the mystical, even as it’s clearly a composite. Have you tried lowering the opacity of the lichen layer? That may keep the mystery as it lets the cacti stand out further and possibly somewhat obscures the fact that it’s a composite.
Mark, one of the more difficult tasks with this one was determining where to set the opacity of the lichen layer. Your thought is a good one but when I tried reducing the opacity any more than this, I didn’t like the result.
Definitely interesting! Makes me dig down and explore all the nooks and crannies. Getting the right opacity can be a problem with composites. Did you try blend modes? I often use Soft Light, Overlay or Hard Light, with clipped curves layers to tweak the contrast of each layer. Then play with masks.
I did explore blend modes. I can’t remember which one I finally chose. And the lichen image was about the fifth “texture” image I tried pairing with the saguaros.
One could mistaken the lichen as the desert undergrowth. It pairs nicely with the saguaros. As others have mentioned perhaps slightly reducing the opacity of the lichen layer and further masking out that too center section would reinforce the illusion. Nice work!
