Natures patterns/ abstract?

An attempt at abstract, dare I say it, art?

People who live in New England often, erroneously, assume that the fall foliage has unmatched color. But I was struck by the patterns in the foliage on the Island of Hawaii. Made last March, hand held with the Canon 5D @ ISO 400 with the 24-105 4.5 L zoomed to 105.

-Nat

Nathaniel Alpert said:

An attempt at abstract, dare I say it, art?

People who live in New England often, erroneously, assume that the fall foliage has unmatched color. But I was struck by the patterns in the foliage on the Island of Hawaii. Made last March, hand held with the Canon 5D @ ISO 400 with the 24-105 4.5 L zoomed to 105.

-Nat

Click to expand...

Nat,

First I like the image. Nicolas Claris has shots like this, (from Spain, I believe), but with much less color spread. The special feature of his work is the shadowing between the long leaves. His image are excellent too. The common feature of this kind of work is the simplification of the beauty of the plant to just get the essence, sufficient, but without every related feature. One is then allowed to imagine the rest or not. To the abstraction idea, yes, the form is departed from what is likely to have been as seen and in any case, the limited sampling of the whole plant and the geometric elongated pattern is fertile ground for our own ideas to be brought to your photograph.

To what extent did you alter the saturation. The edges of the leaves do appear to show that flavor of change. Not to say that is wrong but is it necessary, or might one feather the changes so that the edge would be cleaner, if what I said has any truth to it at all?

Thanks for sharing!

Asher

P.s. I'm entirely suspicious of you being involved in these colors. Not that you cheat! No I don't suspect that at all. Still I feel that your eye goes for this color scheme and you seem to find such color ranges wherever you go. Yes, this might be a not uncommon finding in Hawai, but perhaps you'd also find this in Watt's or Wishire Blvd in L.A.

Asher,

Thanks for your critique. I always find it helpful. It's hard to answer your questions about color and saturation. It is true that I am drawn to this sort of thing. In fact i find that I enjoy, more than ever, the natural world. Instead of answering directly, let me tell you about the way I processed the image. It was in two steps: Lightroom followed by a couple of maneuvers in PSCS3. In LR, I did the usual exposure adjustments, followed by a major reduction in contrst. Then,to increase color separation, I adjusted the luminance of the red, green, blue and purple. After, opening the image in PSCS3, I did a channel mixer adjustment to strengthen the red green and blue without altering overall saturation. The final move was to increase the midtonetone contrast. I used this procedure to make a print on Innova Smooth Cotton Rag, a matte paper. I made from this a jpeg for web viewing.

Whether I could find a subject that would interest me on Wiltshire Blvd is debatable.

-Nat

I like the simplicity in the composition. Nice.

i like this a lot. I shot a similar one, but the colors are all in the green family

Have you tried different compositions and greater depth of field?

Hi Nathaniel,

What struck me looking at your photo is have you experimented with different compositions and greater depth of field before taking your final shot? Without wanting to sound to critical, I am sure with a higher f-stop you could have the whole leaf in focus, which might have created an interesting effect... also cropping the picture from the left and from the top might have given the photo a different feel. Have you tried changing the hue of certain colors completely to get a more abstract effect, and a sense of rhythm in your colors..?

This is the first time as a newby I am posting on OPF, so forgive me if I sound to harsh...

Kindly,

Rene-Frank

Rene F Granaada said:

Hi Nathaniel,

What struck me looking at your photo is have you experimented with different compositions and greater depth of field before taking your final shot? Without wanting to sound to critical, I am sure with a higher f-stop you could have the whole leaf in focus, which might have created an interesting effect... also cropping the picture from the left and from the top might have given the photo a different feel. Have you tried changing the hue of certain colors completely to get a more abstract effect, and a sense of rhythm in your colors..?
k

Click to expand...

Hi Rene,

It's good to see another get hooked by this picture. Nat's picture is already narrow:



I don't see exactly the crop you are envisioning with your suggest crops. If the entire plant was indeed in focus then the picture would be clearer, but would it be better? I think Nat wanted a soft pastel appearance.

Asher

We all have our personal vision...allowed..no?

Dear Asher,

I guess I am thinking about a slightly different picture, maybe taken with a macro lens, where the crop (my personal taste) would have been halfway between the main nerve of the leaf on the left, and the left edge of the photo, to loose the curved line on the left, and from the top crop about a third down, that way putting more focus on the eye shape and the whole lower right hand portion of the photo...

My whole question was, and I guess only Nat can answer that, when taking the picture, if the somewhat more impressionistic way he portrayed the leaves was intentional....

Here is a rendering of my interpretation of some of nature's beauty, taken in Yosemite in the fall of 2006, with changes in the hues and saturation of some of the colors...