Something a Little Different

[John Storjohann]

Well, different for me, anyway...:bg3:. Went on a shoot yesterday with water lilies at the Botanical Gardens my primary goal, but happened across this plant leaf that reminded me a bit bit of the classic shot of a nautilus...and I love the texture of the leaf itself. Taken with a 180mm lens, f/22@1/30. RAW file converted in LR, brought it into PS and repaired a few small spots on the leaf..also tweaked the color and saturation a bit. Any comments or suggestions welcome.

[Dave Leroy]

I love these sort of shots. Great colours with the greens and bit of golden colour as well as some red and yellow.

I like the detail and as you have mentioned the natural lines and shapes that are there to be seen.

I do wonder what it would look like without the stem and black space. Hard to tell but as is I like the nice long look.

Lovely highlights.

Dave

[John Storjohann]

Dave, after reading your comments, I took another look at a second version of the image where I rotated the image 90 degrees CCW...I think the stem may be more complimentary from this rotation...it always amazes me how something so simple can change the way we look at things! I had to lower the JPG quality to meet memory requirements, but hopefully it holds together well. Either way, thank you for your comments!

[christopher galeski]

nice patterns and color,and sharp,to me this is better,than the repost.thanks.

[Steve Maxson]

Hi John. I prefer the vertical look of the OP as I think it has more impact (my subjective opinion). I like the way the major veins in the leaf radiate out and especially how they lead my eye to the bottom of the frame. Also, nice light and interesting textures and patterns on the leaf. The bottom of the leaf looks oversharpened to me - though this may be an artifact of having to save the image at a low jpeg quality. Overall, this is very nicely done.

[Julie Kenward]

John, this is so well done! I totally think the OP is the best image - strong ROT's positioning and the way the light is more intense at that spot and then falls off at the bottom of the frame - it puts my eye right where it needs to be and holds it there. I also think the black negative space works because there is so much texture and pattern here - it give us a place for our eye to settle down. I love the original - I wouldn't change a thing.

[Bob Miller]

John....I like both of these very much but i think I prefer the OP as well. I love the way the highlights move over the leaf from top to darkness at the bottom

[John Storjohann]

Thank you for taking the time to give your observations. Steve, I need to go back and look at the image at the pixel level; I do some "capture sharpening" in either LR or with the Pixel Genius plug-in when I bring the image into PS....my workflow is a bit in a state of flux in that regard, I had always used PK Sharpen from Pixel Genius from RAW Capture Sharpening in the past, but I find I am liking the sharpen and noise reduction features in LR3 as well...I don't do any final sharpening or print sharpening as I let QImage handle that in my workflow when I print. I find QImage invaluable for resizing/printing/sharpening in that last stage. Thanks again...your comments are invaluable!

[Ken Childs]

Hi John, I'm with the others that prefer the OP....I definitely think the vertical is the way to go. I'm not in love with the black triangle because it's pulling my eye away from the rest of the image but I tried a tighter crop that removed that area and I prefer your version. Sharpening on something that has fine hairs can be tricky. You might want to explore using high pass sharpening on subjects like this....it doesn't seem to over-sharpen fine details as much as standard sharpening methods do. Overall this is well done. :S3:

[John Storjohann]

Ken, thank you for your comments. When I look at the full version, I don't notice the same artifacts that I'm seeing here...but I will try working with high-pass sharpening more. I've used it in the past on subjects with fine details with success...I've just moved away from it in favor of my recent workflow....time to revisit! Thanks again.