Photography forum image of the month — June 2010

Every month on our¯¿½pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I¯¿½ve come to real­ize it¯¿½s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That¯¿½s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Swirls by Edg

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

I love the sharp­ness here and over­all depth of field choice here. Lovely sharp fore­ground flower (the focal point) at left.

The tonal qual­ity of the flow­ers is very unique and well done. It’s a bit darker than I’m used to see­ing, but it adds to the unique tonal qual­ity and mood of the pho­to­graph. Gor­geous palette of pinks and reds. Great high­lights in the flower at left and nice sub­tle high­lights on the right flower as well. I like that the left flower is slightly brighter than the right.

My eye is skill­fully guided around the image and rests on the focal point. This is due to some fine focal point selec­tion and lens selec­tion dur­ing expo­sure and some lovely post pro­cess­ing. The post pro­cess­ing (espe­cially the dark­en­ing of the back­ground) refines the over­all com­po­si­tion here and it totally works.

If I have one small nig­gle, I’d clone out/burn the bright­ish white edge of the petal on the main left flower at lower left, but that’s it.

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 edG for cre­at­ing this gor­geous image!

I¯¿½d also like to include these 3 images as hon­ourable men­tions as they also came close to being picked.

Yum­m­mmm — I Love Pollen by Matt K.

Wad­ing Pool by Jas Photo

Descend­ing by Barefoot