Lily

[amolitor]

C&C welcome

 

[terri38 9]

I like the softness here - very pretty. I'm guessing your decision to use the glass with the printed flowers was deliberate?

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

I like how you lit this.

I'd like to see a bit more light on the stamens. The pattern on the cup takes away from it, for me. I'd like to be focused on the flower itself. A clear cup would be less distracting.

 

[amolitor]

Thanks!

The glass was actually selected entirely on the basis of being the right size. I agree that it's a bit busy, but I do like having a bit of texture. Burning it down, and bringing the stamens up sounds like a good plan to me.

 

[KenC]

Interesting - agree that the "parts" need some more light - might clone/darken that bright spot bottom left in the glass

 

[PixelRabbit]

I like how you lit this.

I'd like to see a bit more light on the stamens. The pattern on the cup takes away from it, for me. I'd like to be focused on the flower itself. A clear cup would be less distracting.

This was exactly my thoughts, I took a few looks at this and I wanted to like the glass, I tried really hard, and I think if it was a wildflower it would work, it has a kitschy/cottagey feel to me so I have to say that with this particular flower clear glass is the way to go.

 

[gsgary]

I'm not sure why you cut the stem so short, i use a vase with a narrow neck so you don't see how it is held
like this one http://gsgary.smugmug.com/Competitions/Miscellaneous/i-rB85XrH/0/XL/Scan054-XL.jpg

 

[amolitor]

Well, mainly I cut the stem off and put it in a glass because I wanted to make a photo of the flower with a short stem in a glass, not a different photo. The glass was, as indicated, selected based on availability. Most of the rest of the choices I made on purpose.

 

[cynicaster]

I like the way the flower looks, and personally, the glass isn't bothering me at all.

I have two very small nits with the photo:

I didn't see it right away, but after staring at the picture for a few seconds, it registered that the glass is slightly shifted right and also appears to be slightly tilted to the right. I'm not sure if this was a creative decision, but the subtlety of it makes it seem unintentional.

I'm guessing you manually darkened the background, which is totally fine, but there are visible, tell-tale photoshop "brush strokes", which are a bit distracting. Maybe rev up the burn tool and go over it again? (side note: I'm viewing on a crappy laptop monitor)

 

[amolitor]

Dang, you're dead right, the glass is tilted or at any rate looks tilted which is bad.

The background is painted over, yes, quite deliberately. This particular JPEGification brought that out much more than I wanted, for some reason. That's all on a separate layer, so it's easy to tweak, but I had it posted before I saw how excessive the painting was.

Now I have to go straighten the thing out, too!

 

[ceeboy14]

While you're straightening out the image, you might want to lose the "patterning" in the background to help offset the busy-ness of the pattern in the vase.

 

[amolitor]

This is a bit reworked. Nothing major, but I think incremental improvements.

 

[ceeboy14]

I've refrained from comment because I wanted to have a go at it before coming to or jumping to a conclusion. I have several issues with the image, one I expressed earlier with the background competing with the vase pattern. I see in your last iteration you seem to have toned it down a bit more, though I think it could go even further as I've done in the edit. Since the vase cannot be altered, I fely like perhaps I needed to see it more as a glass object and less as a toned down non-entity. I also tended toward de-illuminating the bottom of the vase, kind of letting it meld into the darkness at the bottom of the page. I did add a little more lumination to the lighter parts of the leaves and to the stamens, but only a little. Oh, and I cropped it down a tad as well...personal preference as always.

 

[amolitor]

Thanks, ceeboy! I appreciate your remarks, of course.

I'm just not particularly happy with the background as flat black, I am fussing with it and pushing it around in my mind, though. I want the original crop to give the subject breathing room, but then there's too much blank blackness. Also, the painted background is kind of a thing in this portfolio I am slowly pulling together, so it works (I think) better than might meet the eye. It's surely problematic, though.

 

[ceeboy14]

I just now realized that the crop lost the little bit of gray I left in the image....oops!