"Solo Loco"

A single Datura flower glows yellow and blue from the backlighting of a vivid sunset. The title "Solo Loco" refers to the name of the flower, also being called Locoweed. It is poisonous and causes hallucinations in the animals or humans who consume it. I consider these flowers to be a hearty species of plant, being able to inhabit arid landscapes even in the hottest and driest conditions. Even the leaves remain deep green during the hot summer months. Since moving to Bakersfield, I have often photographed them. They make interesting contrasts against the brown and yellow grasses. Thanks for your time!

Thanks for your comments!

Beautiful colours and fine detail. Very well done.

great composition, excellent use of colors

That flower and the diffuse glow through it are really amazing: you could do a really nice intimate, just by making a horizontal 5:4 crop from the bottom. constructively, my eye keeps wanting to see a warmer color temperature in this. I don't know if a full-on Maxfield Parrish is appropriate to what you saw, but perhaps a bit more toward the orange/yellow end of things?

Love the amazing sense of depth, great color and perspective. Beautiful shot Mark!

This is an impressive image - it is usually not so easy to capture such a close subject with a correct DOF to retain the sharpness of the background. Beautiful color as well.

Mark,   Wonderful, artistic image.  The foreground flower and DOF create a winner.   One thought - strictly an opinion and judgment call - is that the sky being perfectly coordinated with the red/purple rim of the flower looks great, but also appears a bit too "painted" to be natural.  This in no way lessens the impact and effectiveness of the image.  Congratulations and best regards.

Larry

Thanks Raymond, Niki, John, Tim, Yan and Larry! John, this is a blend of two exposures. John, the white balance was daylight, so you can imagine the blues in the RAW files. I corrected the foreground exposure to bring back some yellow to the grasses, meanwhile I masked the flower and then used the sky exposure as was, which brought out a rich contrast of yellows and blues. Even the flower has both hues. Larry, the sky is natural and if it looks painted, even better me thinks. As I said, it just looks surreal because I corrected the colors of the grasses and leaves only, so the colors are incongruous to some degree; my intention actually!

Mark you did a wonderful job when you blended your images. This is magnificent. Did you do it yourself or did you use software? I want to say this is a fantastic panoramic view, but I think of panorama as horizontal or landscape frame, so that may be the wrong word. This is absolutely beautiful, the colours are wonderful, excellent composition. I like how the colour of the sky is repeated in the flower.

Best wishes,

Linda