Stream Abstract

In an attempt to find and get what I want from my photography I've come up with this shot, processed somewhat different from the way I usually do.

I'm not sure how much description to put in here, but briefly, it is a plant growing about two or three inches below the surface of a shallow creek/stream I've become infatuated with in the last month or two.



What I like; what I am working to develop into is a 'nearly surreal' style. I like color and saturation, but have a nasty habit of going over the line.

I'm fairly sure I'll hate this shot in the morning, but would appreciate any remark, comment, critique, edit or whatever that will help me grow.

Please feel free to ask any questions if I haven't said enough already.

Hi Walter,

Thanks for sharing this. To me, this is a very pleasing picture. Upon reading your intro, I started thinking of this mysterious stream somewhere which is so crystal clear that you can take such good pictures of a plant underneath the surface. I can only imagine what message you had in mind with this particular shot, but I don't need to know that anyway. I personally associate it with hope and purity, jumping out at us from an unlikely and remote location. Also very mysterious. Very nice indeed.

I like the composition as well. Maybe some less cropping at the lower left-hand side? I don't know... The colors and texture are very pleasing, although I see some red artifacts on the top leaves, was that real/intentional? You've mentioned the saturation issue, which could indeed have been a bit less.

The rocks at the right-hand side, did you mask there and apply some aquarelle filtering or something like that?

All in all, I like it very much.

Cheers,

Hi Walter,

I feel that we might esplore, if that's OK by you, some different approaches.

"To abstract" means, to me, "to extract from" and it refers to a creative process by which some "essence" of something is taken and then used to somewhat represent it, usually in a different medium.

So here's one of many other approaches.

first I removed the blue cast which was hiding the details.



Then I used the Filter, "Find Edges" on a duplicated layer.



After that, the new layer was blended with the one below by the "Overlay" command.



(The curves layer is to finally brighten the image and add punch and contrast. For simplicty I have not shown this.) In this way one can see a different aspect of looking at this plant in the water. I like the revelation of structure behind the plant. If we had the RAW image, we could do better, perhaps!


Now here's the original image posted.



© 2007 Walter Heller Image from original post of this thread.

Now, this is not to say that my picture is better than yours! Just a modest try!

Asher

Screenshots for demonstration of concept are saved at very low jpg quality.

I wanted to back away from these for a few days, to get over the initial shock

Pretty good, and thanks for the alternatives. I like the removal of the blue cast. I can see I need to learn more about CS and post processing- but once I do, I'm pretty sure I be able to head exactly in the direction I have in mind- Well, maybe not exactly in mind yet, but I'm going to have fun with my work.

Thanks again,
Walter Feller

Thanks Walter for being open to viewing with different eyes. Mine was just the tip of exploration. I ac tually wanted to bring out what was under the water, more essence of what could be found.

Thanks for tolerence to my ideas and for sharing.

Asher