Winner Chosen - July 2010 - Admin's choice - Image of the month

[Marko]

Hi members,

In case you are new around here this is where the Admin (me) chooses one excellent photo each month from all the photos nominated by other members during that month in the Member's monthly choice forum.

Just so it's clear, the photo I choose is not necessarily the best one of the month. I've come to realize it's not really logical to pit images from totally different genres against each other. That's why there are categories in photo contests.

My goal is to simply choose an excellent photo and talk about why I think it rocks. I just wanted to point out that each month this is getting much harder. To my delight, the quality just keeps getting better and better and this month was another insane month. I had LOTS of trouble choosing just 1 image. There will be numerous honourable mentions that will be posted in the blog in a week's time.

This month's choice is Time for Sunflowers by mibreit

I chose this image for several reasons:

Impact - Wow, bang, kapow, this is an extremely striking image and it's a pleasure to look at it.

Sharpness - Love the sharpness here. This is partially achieved through focus stacking (where multiple images with different focus points are blended together)

Degree of difficulty - This is no easy shot to get. mibreit waited for the right time of day to get this. During the shoot both exposure AND focus were shot differently on multiple frames. Then in PP these were all blended. A whole lot of love and dedication went into getting this gorgeous image.

Colour - These colours sing. There's also some great juxtaposition in the colours of the sky versus the colours in the foreground.

Blending - The blending of the various exposures (and focal points) is tastefully done here to my eye. Sometimes HDRs or DRIs are too overdone and call attention to themselves. This is not the case here for me. The greens here are the only colour that I may have toned down slightly (but they still work for me and we are in the realm of personal taste at this point). If I have one niggle, I can still see a touch of haloing around some of the leaves, but I can totally live with it.

Composition - Very interesting elements throughout the foreground, midground and background. Although there are multiple things to focus on, the large foreground left flower is extra-sharp and just slightly brighter than the other flowers, thus making it one of the main focal points.

For all these reasons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opinions, some members may disagree with my choice. That's cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to further critique the image. The purpose here is to suggest strong elements in the photo that we may learn from.

Congrats again mibreit for creating this gorgeous image!