How much texture is too much texture?

[TobascoJackson]

First of all, I'm new here. So hi.

Moving on - I'm having trouble drawing the line between "heavily textured photograph" and "that's too edited to be called 'photography' anymore." It's a tough situation to explain, but basically, I'm trying to do a set called "The Matrix in Still Life," which is exactly what it sounds like. Here's the photo in question:

Image is large, so I linked it

I want it to be gritty and greenish-tinged, like the movie, but I don't want it to be overdone. This is still supposed to be photography.

Personally, I think it's a bit too much. But I would love feedback from more experience photographers.

Thanks!

 

[Chris of Arabia]

It's largely a matter of taste and what you wish the image to be. In that respect, only you can decide whether it's too much or too little. As far as the image itself goes, I'm not sure it says The Matrix to me, but I can kind of see what you're aiming at. I'd suggest finding a different texture.

Try looking at this image I found - Matrix wallpaper - this has a very different feel to it than the one you've used, which look more like the stuff you paste onto walls. If I remember rightly, most of the Matrix effect is made of scrolling characters of some form, so maybe an adaptation of that is called for and there's a distinct glow to it - look up the Orton effect, there are quite a few tutorials on how to create it.