Wheat Fields

[Tom Walter]

Patterns of wheat and plowed ground taken in Eastern Washington.

Nikon D200
Nikon18-200 3.5-5.6 G VR at 75mm
1/640 sec at f8
ISO 400
Tripod

[Paul Marcellini]

Really nice Tom. I like the comp and color contrast here. I'm not too fond of the dull sky but I don't like a crop of it. A bw would work well here too.

[David Thomasson]

I like it, Tom. Makes for a very pleasing abstract. Nice details in the plowed ground. This would probably look good printed really big.

There's headroom to boost the whole image a bit in levels. You can also select the sky and perk that up a bit with curves.

http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/7348/wheat.jpg

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Love the graphic patterns in the fields - beautiful shapes. Very well 'seen' & photographed.

[Steve Patterson]

I like this very much. I tried cropping out the sky, and like it also. Not really sure which version I prefer...the strong graphic element comes out in either crop.

http://www.pbase.com/spatterson/image/112377034.jpg

[Grady Weed]

I vote for no sky. Love the round lines and shapes. The contrast is killer. Good colors.

[Tom Walter]

David,
You made a big improvement to my image. You are right, there was quite a bit more room to adjust the white point and some for the midtones. Sometimes I tend to be too conservative, worrying about clipping. All this BPN imput is gradually helping me improve my photoshop skills. I like the bluish-gray look to the sky in your rework but was not able to reproduce it with curves. Did you do it for RGB or just blue?
Tom

[David Thomasson]

David,
You made a big improvement to my image. You are right, there was quite a bit more room to adjust the white point and some for the midtones. Sometimes I tend to be too conservative, worrying about clipping. All this BPN imput is gradually helping me improve my photoshop skills. I like the bluish-gray look to the sky in your rework but was not able to reproduce it with curves. Did you do it for RGB or just blue?
Tom

Thanks, Tom. In curves, I pulled in the top of the blue curve first, up to the point where it started to clip. Then went to RGB and pushed up the center of the curve a bit, just to brighten without clipping.

[Tom Walter]

David,
It worked. Thanks for the help.
Tom

[Robert Amoruso]

I am OK with the sky Tom as it adds an additional layer and depth to the image and you did right cropping it a lot. What I suggest is you crop more from the bottom at least 2/3 of the way up on the wheat on the right. Well seen image - nice work.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Tom,
I'm with Robert on this one. I like the way David brought up the sky but the bottom feels a bit unbalanced......taking some off helps improve the flow for me too.