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Very good composition very well executed. Nice colors and tones. Congrats !

I generally don't rate outside a chosen genre (street) unless I am absolutely blown away by a photo, and then figure others will rush to it anyway, and I'll save my ratings and contribute a critique. My ratings are meant to send a photo to my 'highest rated' folder, which generally is reserved for 'street' and photos with really great composition.

 

This is one of your best ever, to my way of thinking. Stunning colors and wonderful composition, all offset by a black background, which causes the color images to 'pop'.

 

Wonderful photo -- maybe even rated a little conservatively.

 

Best to a great photographer.

 

John (Crosley)

I think you have too many objects in focus, hard to pick out the main subjects, eye jumps around too much.

Nice capture!!

Love the colors and i like the way you burned the surroundings to brighten up the pods ... great job indeed !

what a nice photo i see...

great and beautiful one.!

Beautiful, dramatic image. Wonderful composition. Nicely done. Dan

Thanks for your views and comments!

This image has indeed been modified from the original exposure and a fair bit of burning has delivered the desired result.

Jim, I appreciate your succinct evaluation.

The objects in focus are a bit of a mixture of poppy capsules and their crowns. The three most prominent are followed by an additional two which are slightly outside of the depth of field. Together, they form a kind of crescent shape that runs through the frame.

Overall, I'm quite happy with this one, but can see the lack of a proper resting point for the viewer.

John, as always, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm rather chuffed with your impression of this image, but am unsure if it might be my best ever. In the 'category' of close up shots, it does rate very highly on a personal level.

For some (many?) viewers, there is an unfortunate negative association between poppies and narcotics. It can also evoke thoughts about Afghanistan. Either way, if not properly used, these crops are deadly!

Getting access to them was a terrific photographic opportunity...

very interesting and different from the norm...congrats....David

Please note the following:

 

This image has been selected for discussion. It is not necessarily the "best"

picture the Elves have seen this week, nor is it a contest.

 

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The About Photograph of the Week page tells you more about this feature of

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Before writing a contribution to this thread, please consider our reason for having this forum: to help people learn about photography.

Visitors have browsed the gallery, found a few striking images and want to know things like why is it a good picture, why does it work? Or,

indeed, why doesn't it work, or how could it be improved? Try to answer such questions with your contribution.

 

I love this poppies photo -- a somewhat comical composition -- but it's not a stunning image, just amusing and well done.

As a general rule, I think Peter Daalder's photographs are absolutely top-notch. This one, however has problems which the elves must have seen and included it here just to get people to comment on the composition, focus and burning in, etc. Well they caught me thinking all three items need to be addressed.

 

I find that my eye darts all over the place when I look at this photograph. It lacks composition because I am not led to a specific place within the image. It just doesn't flow for me.

 

Had the poppies in the background been a bit more out of focus it might be improved. I definitely do not like the fairly large brightly colored out of focus poppy located midway left to right and about a third of the way up the photograph.. It seems to be more the subject of the picture as I keep being attracted by it. I think it could be burned in and it should lose some of that attraction which might improve the picture a little. Otherwise, just clone that one out.

 

If I were to try to crop it in any way, I would end up with two or more distinct photographs -- not a desirable thing. Actually, I don't think cropping is viable at all. It might be improved by further darkening some of the out of focus poppies.

 

As i stated above, I really love so many of Peter's images that I hate to critique this one by itself. As an artist, it is hard to beat Peter Daalder. Generally he does beautiful artsy looking images and I wish I could achieve half what he does. I just don't think this one is as worthy as his other works. Congratulations on being this weeks chosen one.

 

Willie the Cropper

It's different. I find it difficult to keep my eye in one place. There seems not definitive subject to rest the eyes on. I keep going to the rather large poppy which is out of focus among all the rest in focus toward the bottom of the frame

I too had trouble with the object(s) of interest. I tried reducing substantially the brightness of the smaller

three poppies in the middle, and reduced to some extent the brightness of the smaller ones at the back. I also

increased the brightness of the middle to right side flower, though it is not much in focus. That left me with

five rather bright poppies arranged in a semi circular way, and then my eyes started from the foreground right

side one and having an angular tour came back to the same, thus giving a closure to my view. The burning is fine

for me. Thanks.

Congrats Pete, and it's about time!

 

The numbers in the above/below attachment are for easier reference. I think I'm reading that poppies 3,4 and 5 are giving people the headaches, so the snipped version on the bottom shows what a pair of clippers could have offered. I think they're right, but considering the effect this subject has on the mind, the zig zagging, not quite clear composition is somewhat appropriate, I would say, and I've decided therefore that either version would be more or less the same in my view.

I also meant to say, in addition to the crazy composition, sharpness through out the frame would be the best option. In other words, the selective focus emphasizes certain poppies, and deemphasizes others, however, those that are deemphasized are still vying for attention (thanks to their shape and color), so I would suggest having them all sharp would give them all more or less the same level of importance, and the crazy composition would therefore be more acceptable.

I disagree with others comments about how their eye moves around too much and that there isn't a main focal point. When you first look at the picture you see the main head, the large one on the left that's closest to us and that is the most in focus. Then your eye gets drawn to the next one that is just up and to the right of it. Next your eye gets drawn to the bottom right one. That triangle is what creates the composition.

 

I'm an artist as well and this is one technique we use to create composition in our paintings. You want the eye to wander around the picture for as long as you can. If you can keep someone's eye on your image for longer then 10 seconds you are doing really really well. This one does just that, your eye does not leave the image because you're eye can't help but sweep the entire image, due to the composition. Even in the top part of the image, there is a triangle to keep your eye in the pic. It's created by the two heads just above the large one and then the head at the very top of the image, so once again your eye is drawn back into the picture instead of leaving it.

 

Now are all the other heads too distracting....If you just left the 5 or 6 that creates the composition, you would have too much empty space and, to me, the image would have less impact. And you can't just pick and choose what you want in the photograph you took. We are also documenting life and you can't just say you don't like the lower branch on the tree because you might it like it better without, just for example. However you can choose where to put the tree in the composition. Anyways, I'm not going to go into the ever apparent contradiction on the subject of digital manipulation. Another post for another day :-)

 

Also if there was sharpness throughout the frame I think your eye would be struggling to find the focal point. Your eye naturally searches for detail, blurred objects give your eyes rest, and allows your eyes to move around the image freely. With the three dimensional feel to the image you need the blurred areas. Could some areas be blurred more...I don't know. I personally love the darkness of the image, it gives it a lot more impact and allows the color to pop. If the foliage wasn't lost in the background your eyes would be going crazy! Anyways I think he did a wonderful job in creating this image for us. It has my vote!

In an image like this one, I think you begin by considering the placement of the highlights--the pods--which are numerous enough to be seen as filling an irregular polygon. The simplest circumscribing polygon is convex, easy on the eye. Three large pods, labeled 2, 6, and 7 above, form a fairly regular triangle, which acts as a focus, and converges toward the background, providing depth. So far so good. Pods 1 and 8 compete with the dominant triangle for interest, but pod 8 at least provides transition to the background. Pods 3, 4, and 5 fill the dominant triangle, are well enough subordinated by size and defocus to avoid conflicting with it, and I don't see them as a problem. 5 is overlapped by a stem as no other pod is, forming a disjunct element, and looks a little busy for that reason. The pods from 8 back are seen in two rows, one of three pods, beginning with 8, and one of four. These elements appear rather inorganic and weak. The back row in particular marches off to midframe and leaves the picture feeling rather incomplete.

I find the selective focus interesting because it is applied to a single kind of flower. The sharply focused blossoms draw initial attention and give complete information, and the defocused blossoms are interesting in their own right and in comparison with those more sharply focused. The natural world is indeed that which we see and which we don't see, and indeed it goes on and on.

The burning is meant, I think, to simplify this picture, but the added contrast draws our attention to the placement of the pods, which as noted above is somewhat weak. It also emphasizes them as individual elements rather than groupings, which adds to the perception of numerability and snippability.

The theme of this picture is gravidity, and the fundamental contrast is between the brightness of tiny blossoms and the fullness of the pods, rather like a group of pregnant women in wide-brimmed straw hats. I like the way fullness and brightness are brought out by the light, but the pods are gray enough to seem somewhat like stones, rather than repositories of life. Perhaps they would benefit from more saturation, and perhaps I need to pay less attention to my interpretations and more to things as they are.

This is amusing. Sort of reminds me of Pied the Piper. The burning gives a hat effect. They all look like they're wearing hats. Reducing the depth of field reflects volumes, hence the following of Pied. One of the problems which may only be mine is having to scroll to the get the full view which may be why people commenting here said they had to keep looking around the photo. That aside, I don't mind looking all over a photo just like I look over a canvas. If one wants a main focal point just print that and nothing else. Pam

As the initial commentator in the original discussion above, I foresaw many of the arguments raised above and they may all have their own validity, but they are all artistic choices. This capture is extremely strong, in my opinion -- enough that initially I wrote to Peter that I was blown away by this one in particular of his. Now Peter is an excellent photographer in his own right and produces enough possible candidates for Photo of the Week in any case, but this one is a great photo in its own right.

 

Here he has taken the theme of 'radiation' from a center and added the dimension of 'depth' to it, and to me that deserves a special accolade -- in any case, it sure is pretty, and not overly 'busy', in my opinion. Even if it were, I wouldn't be messing with it with any Photoshop tools in any case.

 

Whether one wants all the poppy heads in focus (which may not have been possible if there was a wind, due to stop down requirements and shutter speed exigencies) or if one wants just selective focus, no matter how this scene is focused, it was bound to produce stunning results.

 

One can imagine that Peter went for highest ISO, since he is primarily a landscape photographer, and he wanted the best color rendition, so stopping down was not much of an option if there was any wind at all (or there'd be poppy heads blurred from wind movement).

 

All in all, a well-deserved choice. One I was ready to make when I commented initially, but no one asked me (although someone may have read my comment . . . one never knows).

 

Best to you Peter and congratulations!

 

John

Congratulations to Peter for the POW selection which is very well deserved. Nice to see a nature close-up chosen and I find this a very

successful shot. The colours and shallow DOF make it pop and I think a shot with all the tops sharp would not have a greatly diminished

impact. Peter has made the most of the hand he was dealt by nature. Yes, the cloned version works better but nature photographers need

to have some integrity about how they present what they see.

Love the short depth of field, to me, it adds a sense of movement forward. The lighting is beautiful. Again for me, the composition is slightly off, my preference would be for a slightly slanted view.

it's a very nice shot, especially the pod's sharpness, I don't know the photographer how to take it, which was treated

by photoshop or other software. It's amazing part of the photo, isn't it? About the composition, I believe everyone has

his own thought.

I like this photo, the flowers pop on the darkened background and the depth of field is reasonable and expected unless your carrying around a 10-12K field camera.

Good job, keep on taking images

Doug