Barbwire and Flowers

[wxchaser]

I was walking down the street in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans and happened to look up. There, against the sky, was both flowers and razerwire. The contrast between the two, the sharp and formidable and the beautiful and gentle, definitely caught my eye.

Razerwire is the circular, razor sharp type of barbwire that's popular for protecting high security sites like military bases, etc. In combat zones, they'll sometimes just leave a big roll of it out in a field to slow down the enemy. You can see it on top of fences of state penitentiaries and jails. The barbed edges are razor sharp, thus the name. On the other hand, flowers are just the opposite. Anyway, enough chatter ... just check out my photo ...

Lynn in New Orleans



Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 6.3 mm
ISO Speed: 64
Exposure Bias: 0/3 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire, auto mode

[oriolhdz]

Hi wxchaser:
I would recommend you to maintain the pixels size of the image at 600px as the rules says. You can read all the rules in this Link
Thanks!

[peeperita]

although, i appreciate your enthusiasm, it would be nice if you read the psoting rules for this forum.....

Critique Forum Rules

thank you.....adhering to these guidlines makes less work for me.....

peeper

[subrataofkris]

The idea of introducing the subject contrast is creative. But in the shot, the bright and beautiful colour of the flowers are not really visible, so the contrast theme is not looking right. The tall black fence also cuts the shot diagonally and grabs unnecessary attention.

Please adhere to the size rules in your next post.

[southernbelle]

I really like the idea behind this.

[fletch]

Originally Posted by southernbelle

I really like the idea behind this.

Me too but the execution is just not quite right. A bit less fence, as subrataofkris says, and some fill flash to bring out the colours in the flowers and counteract the natural back lighting may do the trick.

[tuxcomputers]

There is more details in dark areas than most people realise.

A bit of layer duplicating, give it a mask, gamma adjustment here, tone mapping there, little noise reduction, touch of haze removal, finished off with a smidge of Unsharp mask and poof here is the result:

[CactusTri]

I like the picture to begin with, but I love the edits that tuxcomputers did! I would really like to learn more about that kind of touch up work, but I need to find someone local that can help guide me through the first steps. in the meantime, I appreciate the details that you give when you make changes as it helps me start to think about how to accomplish different things.

[tuxcomputers]

Originally Posted by CactusTri

I like the picture to begin with, but I love the edits that tuxcomputers did!

Originally Posted by CactusTri

I would really like to learn more about that kind of touch up work, but I need to find someone local that can help guide me through the first steps.

Why local? I am currently doing up some tutorials of basic image editing with GIMP. Basic things like levels, selection and cropping etc.

[CactusTri]

Originally Posted by tuxcomputers

Why local? I am currently doing up some tutorials of basic image editing with GIMP. Basic things like levels, selection and cropping etc.

I have tried going through some of the tutorials I have found online and not gotten very far. I think some of my problems are from trying to follow tutorials that are for a somewhat different version. I think if I had someone in person that knew this stuff they could show me they way to do some things specifically in my version.

I would be happy to take a look at any tutorials that are out there for GIMP. (p.s. I currently have 2.4.6)