Pictures from Kew - 56k beware

[Colin Blues2]

Took these at the weekend.















Any suggestions for improving them? what do you think of the composition?

Thanks

Colin

[beano500]

Wow! Excellent stuff.

The fourth of those looks very surreal - what the hell is it?

[omitchell]

beano500 said:

Wow! Excellent stuff. The fourth of those looks very surreal - what the hell is it?

It's one of the many glass sculptures by Dave Chihuly that they are currently exhibiting all over kew

edited for speeling


>> Edited by omitchell on Tuesday 15th November 14:08

[beano500]

Ah - thought Kew was full of flowers!

I do have a little criticism, though. The last one - the red leaves (Rowan???). Just a bit too fussy for my liking....

Perhaps an uncluttered backdrop to make them stand out better?

[simpo two]

No 5 (b/w) is the most striking for me. Because you didn't resize your images to 750px wide before posting, image quality has been spoiled a bit.

[Colin Blues2]

The glass sculptures are all over the place in amongst the flowers and there are some amazing ones. The fourth one was particularly striking and I think comes out well as b/w. I might play with the 3rd one and see how that comes out as b/w.

Yes the leaves on the tree were so striking I didn't consider the background much but maybe I should have tried a different angle and got more grass. I'll try and blur the background a bit more with some post processing.

Re-sizing the image to 750px is that the optimum so that they all come out full width?

I'll have a go at rezing them tonight and update the original post.

I can't decide if the first two are just to contrived to work well.

Thanks

Colin

[rustybin]

Really like the B/W one. The first two I am not so sure about, No 2 is out of focus, No 1 looks like it is because of the texture of the granite, almost looks as though the photo is really noisey.

[vipers]

Love the one of the berries, good one.

[simpo two]

Colin Blues2 said:

Re-sizing the image to 750px is that the optimum so that they all come out full width?

Yep; over 750px they get butchered, sorry, resized automatically, by PH...

Resize, sharpen and it'll work wonders

[V6GTO]

simpo two said:

Resize, sharpen and it'll work wonders

John,
What's the difference, if any, between sharpening then resizing and resizing then sharpening? (Not a trick question, I don't know )

Martin.

[rude girl]

Colin Blues2 said:

Yes the leaves on the tree were so striking I didn't consider the background much but maybe I should have tried a different angle and got more grass. I'll try and blur the background a bit more with some post processing.

This is really picky, but could you lose the fly at the same time? I can't help it - my eyes come to rest on it every time - I didn't even get as far as noticing the background!

[simpo two]

V6GTO said:

simpo two said: Resize, sharpen and it'll work wonders What's the difference, if any, between sharpening then resizing and resizing then sharpening?

I've found that sharpening is best done last. If you sharpen, then change the size, it doesn't look so good.

For a relatively small image such as on here, Filter>Sharpen is easy and works wonders. Just resizing from (say) 3000px to 750px leaves the image looking remarkably soft.

[simpo two]

rude girl said:

This is really picky, but could you lose the fly at the same time? I can't help it - my eyes come to rest on it every time...

This'll take your mind off it

[rude girl]

Simpo, you're a monster!

[Mrs BlueCerbera]

rude girl said:

This is really picky, but could you lose the fly at the same time? I can't help it - my eyes come to rest on it every time - I didn't even get as far as noticing the background!

I hadn't even noticed it until you mentioned it - shows how good my eyes are

My eyes keep focusing on it now .... you've ruined that photo for me now RG

[rude girl]

Mrs BlueCerbera said:

My eyes keep focusing on it now .... you've ruined that photo for me now RG

Oops