Light-painted sunflowers - I used a zippo, and also a shiny blue/green light to make the background trails, and a torch to light up the sunflowers themselves.
In pp, I played with the intentional use of blur a lot more than I usually do, lets see what people thing. I really like the end result - might be a little over the top, but what the hell :)
Statistics
Place: 138 out of 255 Avg (all users): 5.5775 Avg (commenters): 6.1667 Avg (participants): 5.5761 Avg (non-participants): 5.5800 Views since voting: 889 Views during voting: 225 Votes: 142 Comments: 9 Favorites: 2 (view)
Your subject fills the frame almost entirely, and is a centered composition. For this one, I think this is appropriate. Using three flowers instead of one is far more effective in this approach, so good choice. I think it was also a good decision to use three because it adds a bit of dynamism to the capture instead of offering an offset/angled view, which would have been another approach to add visual interest.
The most eye-catching part about your photo, however, is the lighting. Some of the commenters weren’t too pleased with the effect you had by using this approach, but I personally am a fan. I think the blur wasn’t a bad choice, but it would have been improved if you decreased the lighting on the edges of the petals as you neared the edge. This fading would add the ephemeral blur that you used. I’m not sure if you added the blur in PP or not, but one way to increase the blur a bit in capture would be to use a small fan either directly in front of or behind the flowers to slighting rustle the tips of the petals. I enjoy the colors of the lights in the background, but I think they could have been muted a bit more so they weren’t as sharply contrasting and more dreamy. In general, the dreamy-ness feels like the theme here, but you sorta partially utilized it and didn’t go all out. One other thing, which I know is really hard when you have such a great range of color between the center of the flower and the petals, is if you were able to add a bit more light to the centers. The texture of sunflower centers is interesting, and this would have been a nice addition. All in all, I personally would have given you a higher score, somewhere between 6 or 7 depending on how I felt when I was voting. Good effort of setting yourself off a bit from the field.
-Derek
I would have never guessed you did this with lighting - VERY clever! I very much do like the result. Sunflowers to me as very cheerful flowers, and the "electric" nature of your light trails combined with the smoothness of the processing really amps up the "cheerful" level of this - very warm, very delightful, and very clever indeed!
Painting with light or a filter added? Not that fond of it although it's good that you tried somthing different and creative. I like the flowers, just not all the swirls behind them.
hmm. i don't know what to say about this shot. part of me loves it. and the other part doesnt like the bright colors in the background ( a tad bit distracting imho). ...7.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
