Bees hives and beauties (c&c pleeease!)

[Foxx]

Yo TPF! I got a chance to visit a honey bee farm the other day and got some interesting pictures...Plus a few shots of friends and colors I've been playing with. Please tell me what you think!

#1 - The beekeeper was transplanting new queens to new boxes so me and a friend had a VERY personal view of thousands of honey bees in their boxes. The darker, long one in the middle is the queen of this hive.

#2 - One "hive" that goes into a box. A box can have an upwards of 15,000 bees in it.

#3 - A snapshot I got of my friend, I really liked her pose here, it felt very natural. I also like the coloring scheme I created for this shot. Any suggestions on better coloring?

#4 - Another snapshot, just playing with coloring again. Is it too peachy?

 

[dancer]

Beautiful shots!

 

[Foxx]

Thank you! I need some critique though -- how can I improve If I don't know where my weaknesses are?

Another one to entice some activity out of the 122 people who viewed this without replying:

 

[sleist]

I like #1 the best followed by 2 then 4.
This laptop at work is not the best for judging coloring. Are you using plugins or tring this on your own?
The result reminds me of some of the filters in Color Efex 4 for film type effects.
Unfortunately they only number them instead of naming them or I'd be more specific.
While I generally like the effect, I tend to have a difficult time deciding if the effect enhances the image or just makes it different (my images, not these).
I end up wandering aimlessly more often than not.

Sorry for rambling ....

 

[Foxx]

No thank you for the ramble haha!

No plugins, I am using photoshop and gradient maps. They are indeed reminiscent of cinematic colouring, its somewhat what I'm going. And I know what you mean about not knowing whether it is adding or detracting from the original shot -- I'm kind of on a binge with tinkering with coloring and effects in PS(as I've just discovered the whole facet) so I may be going overboard.

thanks for the input!

 

[Frequency]

I really liked the bee hive, save the harshness of light; second image is also well timed.

But your friends... they needed be shown as a separate thread; too much honey in the smae thread is not good

You could build another Mount Himalaya if you collect all those non-pelted stones