Went to a favorite meadow in the Southern California chaparral environment and isolated this Wand Sage in its habitat of forbs, grasses and wildflowers. Most of the flowers on the “wands” appear to have been browsed off. It wasn’t difficult to coax tones, colors and textures from this small hillside comp but could not decide between these two renditions. So I thought I’d share them both and see what NPNers think. In the first image an equal amount of attention in processing was shared between all the plants and vegetation. I usually don’t see much of the aqua color (except on some sages) so I highlighted it in the second post, hence the plant enjoys a more dominant position in the scene. What do you think?
I really liked the wildness of the area and was real pleased that the ISO- 800 didn’t seem too noisy.
Yes, a few leave clusters have a reddish and orange coloring, I hadn’t thought of working that up. But I think I’ll try it as it promotes the sage bush. I did warm up the grasses in the highlight image and like how they stand out also
Stephen, what an interesting find. What you did with warmth and color in the second image elevates this several notches, the image has much more vitality. I especially like the background repetition of the aqua/green color of the foreground sage. You found an intimate scene with a very pleasing mosaic of colors. Nice work on this image, I very much enjoyed viewing this.
One minor suggestion would be to slightly burn the bright grasses along the bottom frame edge (especially in the LRC). This would make the sage bush pop even more.
The second one is definitely a big improvement. I really enjoy the wands coming out of the sage plant. It might be my personal preference but I can see this cropped off from the left, too; just a sliver.
Really a splendidly colorful plant, nicely portrayed. Last year’s dead stalks first looked a bit dreary, but then became a bit of a motion element, shooting out of the plant. The red in the sage is a nice surprise.
There is a lot of orange in the surrounding grass, to compliment the aqua. One of the things I enjoy about Guy Tal’s images is his ability to make grasses a colorful contributor to a scene. In the attached rendition, I tried to do that without stealing the spotlight from the sage plant. Also played down the aqua in the top of the scene.
Appreciate your thoughts and comments, Dick. Yes, I agree that generally grasses can offer a variety of colors and tones and can be very strong elements in an image; there are times I am maybe overly cautious and fearful of using too much vibrancy and saturation fearing I might be overcooking them. I think your rendering brings more life to the photo.
