Weekly Competition #93 - Vegetables Competition

Preface - I discovered a little problem with the gallery. I use Firefox as my browser, with colour management enabled. When I look at the second entry (from mr.mellow) I do get different colours depending on whether I look at the image within the competition gallery or on the image itself (after clicking on the competition gallery bigger sized one).

Opening the image (after downloading it) in Photoshop can also alter colours. When I look at johnriley's entry, for example, my Photoshop assumes that it is in the working colour profile (which is set to AdobeRGB) as the image has no assigned profile. At least it looks the same within the browser.

The differences are only slight but sometimes two entries are very close together and it could affect ranking by the judge.
I don't know what to suggest as a solution, maybe it's best to submit entries in sRGB only for the time being. And maybe the gallery could be fixed to show pictures with the original colour profile embedded...

Thanks to a few late entries you had to wait a bit longer for the comments and ranking. Sorry about that.

Now, on to the judging:

johnriley - The bag of nature
It looks like our JR did anticipate the theme of this weeks competition. This was a dream start to the competition. It's a wonderful arrangement, competently photographed. If I had to be nitpicking I would say that the colour temperature is a tad to high for my liking.
Very atmospheric shot and as soon as I saw it I knew that I could sit back and relax as we would have a worthy winner again this week. As it turned out John did get some close competition during the week.

mr.mellow - Romanesc
Yessss, one of the classics and one that I plan to do for a long time. Never got round to it so far (but I was eyeballing a specimen on the local market on Saturday after seeing this entry). Good composition and nice depth of field. I think the sRGB version does look more natural (at least to me). What I like better in the AdobeRGB version is the deeper shadows. I had a play around in Photoshop and lowering the gamma did improve the overall impression (for me). Another bummer entry!

beebee - Last Onion
You picked a detail here and overall I do like the choice of subject and composition. The light also seems to be good, but overall the image is lacking; I cannot make out where the focus lies and at f/5.6 the DOF is very shallow so that almost nothing is sharp.
The slight noise from using ISO800 didn't help the overall impression either. And although the onion has started sprouting, I think a tripod and low ISO would have been a definite possibility here. In the process you could have exposed the onion a bit brighter as well.

Tony-O - Vegetarian-Neanderthal...?
What a great idea. I was sitting in a meeting listening to some talks when I first saw your entry. In the thumb I thought: Would be cool to have the shadow form a face. Only later I discovered that it is doing exactly that! Wow! I guess I'm not the only one longing to know how this shot came about, was it intention or interpretation after the fact?
The choice of DOF I like and the overall composition and lighting, of course, is what makes this shot. The only thing I'm not too fond of is the upper left corner. I tried to crop it away and now understand why it still is there ). The mono does work, I wonder what the colour version looks like. Wonderfully creative entry.

MGraley - Care for an olive with your Martini Dry, sir?
Ok, the vegetable as an accessory, a good idea. But for this competition it should have taken centre stage, or at least a more prominent position. As it is it's a bit in the dark. I do like the arrangement, the silver tray, the wooden table top. I'm not so sure about the composition, having the tray bang in the middle. I imagine that you could have found a more appropriate angle to bring the olive more to the centre of attention.
I guess that the DOF is chosen to at least put the focus on the olive (though I have my doubts about that as you chose shutter priority mode...), a plain white plate for it would have helped a bit more.

jackitec - Horny Tomato
I hope this one is not genetically modified . A fine specimen you grew in your garden and you underline it's 'main feature' with the lighting. I think that a bit more depth of field would have been better. It seems that you did overdo the sharpening a bit as I can see halos on the outline of the tomato.

Goliath_UK - Artichokes
Nice subject and good setting, a sort of 'natural habitat' for artichokes, a french market. I like this arrangement and the general composition of the shot. I would have cropped the 'half price' out (i.e. above the 'Artichaut'). The artichoke in front should have been sharper, the background is fine as is. I would not have thought that the 'action program' is the appropriate setting for this still life, but it has worked reasonably well. I suppose you didn't have a tripod with you and therefore resorted to ISO800; as usual, the tripod would have been the better solution image-wise (but probably more inconvenient as well).

mikew - Leek
A fine veggie abstract shot you took there. I like the composition, especially the horizontal lines splitting in the middle and the continuation in the next section of leek. Good sharpness throughout, as you closed the aperture of your macro lens. You could have played a bit more in post processing, I liked a version with gamma brought down from 1.0 to 0.75 better (though that might be a matter of personal preference). Well done!

Snappycaz - Chopping spree
Nice title (alternative: Chop until you drop)! Very nice setting (hope you enjoyed the soup or whatever these slices found their way into), good idea. Also I like the chopping tool in the frame. I wonder, though, if the colour reproduction would have been benefitted from a lower ISO setting. The carrots look very red to me and in the histogram all three channels are clipped (but red by far the most). If you did this shot hand held then chapeau to you, but tripod and longer exposure with lower ISO would have resulted in better image quality.

Galoot - Garlic
Simple. Straight forward. Good! But why oh why is it baby blue? The composition is great, the lighting as well, but I miss the point of making it blue (and looking at the frame I do infer that you knew that it is blue (RGB 138, 174, 224)). I do like the shot and looking at it makes me want to go in the kitchen and get a bit of garlic to munch on...

foxycce - Yellow bells
Also simple. Also relatively straight forward. But not as good as the previous entry (at least to me). I long for more depth of field (f/5.6 again, seems to be the aperture of choice for vegetables) to have at least a bit more of that front pepper a bit more sharp (better even to have also some of the back pepper in focus). Exposure could be a bit brighter and colour temperature a bit warmer (judging by the colour of the wooden chopping board).
A square crop would have worked better here, IMO, as the board is not contributing much to the picture (though it does make a good background).

Aiki - cabbage
(Was that taken in AdobeRGB? When I opened it in Photoshop (as mentioned above my working profile is set to AdobeRGB) the picture really lit up.)
Another veggie abstract, and I like it as well. I would have cropped out the upper left corner, to get rid of that spot of background (and the dust spec), but apart of that it's an abstract that would be well placed on a kitchen wall. Well done!

Dr.Mhuni - Greek cabbage (in situ)
As much as I like the idea of an in situ picture of veggies I have my difficulties with this one. At first sight I would think that it is a mixture of a yellow flower pic and a mountains-in-the-distance landscape. I think my main complaint is the overpowering colour of the flowers (unless this is part of the cabbage plant, which would mean I completely missed the plot (again)). If I crop above the yellow flowers in the foreground I am left with a picture that I would perceive as more fitting to the theme (albeit a quite small picture).

Darkmunk - should've eaten it sooner
Yes, you should have . Another AdobeRGB entry that looks brighter in the large version. Now that's an extreme macro that shows us things we usually don't notice. Usually when we see mould we just get rid of the veg and don't start to look under the microscope. What a mistake. The black spores on the whitish jelly strings look a bit alien (as in extraterrestrial) to me but they make a nice contrast on the red tomato. Considering the circumstances there is a good DOF to the shot and it is well exposed. The lower right corner looks not so nice but I guess you are quite limited in the means to arrange that mould 'forest'.

Hyram - Brassica napus
Another in situ picture of a vegetable (I'm not sure that rapeseed is classed a vegetable; in the frame of this competition I will assume it is. I'm not a biologist after all. ). I'm looking forward to the bloom of rapeseed here, it is only just starting.
These fields make for great pictures and your entriy is a good example. I like that you can see the individual plants in the front, blurring into a yellow mass at the horizon (and I appreciate that it must look even better when blown up a bit). The composition is good but there are two things that are bothering me: The blunt sky (nothing you could have done about that) and the dark trees and hedges (here a bit of dodging would have helped).

R o b - Like Peas in a Pot
I had to look that one up, never heard it (and I was fooled at first by your artistic freedom to replace a letter). A nice studio shot, good lighting, o.k. DOF (the 5.6 again!) and the falling peas nicely blurred to give the sense of movement. The two peas next to the pot round off the image. (And here a smaller aperture would have been better, showing the pea in front in focus as well.) The red-green contrast between peas and writing on the jug also contributes to the overall positive impression.



I would like to emphasize that all these critiques are meant as exactly that, critiques. Not insults, not offence. It is just my opinion and some suggestions for you to ponder and reject or accept as you wish. If you agree with me then I'm glad that I could be of assistance, if you don't agree with me then nothing has been lost. Individual taste and opinion is the salt in the soup of life.
We as amateurs have the great advantage that our images have to please no one but ourselves.

After that sermon, here are the results:
Winner : johnriley - The bag of nature
2. place: Tony-O - Vegetarian-Neanderthal...?
3. place: mr.mellow - Romanesc

Honourable mentions:
Goliath_UK, mikew, Snappycaz, Galoot, Aiki.

Bad or unattractive entries: none

Creativity price: Tony-O


So I guess John will send himself a message very soon...

Prieni

When I saw JR's entry I thought it was very good indeed and would hard to beat. Well done to JR and thanks to Prieni for the quick and fulsome judging!

Mike

Congratulations to JR - I too liked this shot right from the start, although for me Mr. Mellow's abstract vegetable is very appealing.

Thanks to Prieni for the competition and thorough judging.

Apologies for the late entry.

I had not expected to have anything to enter but driving home yesterday afternoon, I spotted this, although the sun was disappearing behind murky clouds and the sky turning rapidly grey and misty.

On reflection, I think that I prefer the one I submitted to the gallery.

Congratulation's to John,great picture,definate winner.Thanks to Prieni for quick judging, and my second place is sweet.
The initial idea for a picture, was a simple image of the wonderful colour and structure of the leaf.But when i was arranging it in the evening sunshine,the profile of a face appeared just like magic.And that was it.
I had two other titles i considered,one was ''EAT YOUR GREENS''.And the other was ''Vegetables bite back!''
I chose the current title because of a wonderful image in my head of early man eating a cucumber sandwich!I've posted both pics in the gallery for you to compare. Tony.

Well done John, pretty image that.
Thanks Prieni, very thorough and well considered as usual.

I think we should be very careful about giving a bonus for 'shot this week' in this gallery competition, as we already have a competition for that and it seems a shame to discriminate against archive images. They have their place. Some of us are working our fingers to the bone and don't always have time to shoot a bespoke image.

I do try to shoot 'on the day' cos it's more fun, but it's not always possible.

Many thanks for that, I'm really pleased that you liked the image.

As regards colour space, all web images should be in sRGB as this is the universal standard for web sites. In fact I don't think many will accept Adobe RGB, if any.

I would probably suggest that the best way to view is from within your browser. If you open in Photoshop then you should get an option to convert the image to your own colour space if you wish, but sRGB would be better for this IMO.

Nothing to thank for, I like it whether I want or not.

I hope that this will change and having browsers that can apply colour profiles is an important first step in the right direction.

That's what I did when I discovered the discrepancy between the 'in gallery' view and the original view. These two are not consistent if you use a colour managed browser.

The problem only arises when opening pictures without assigned colour profile that are not in your current working colour profile (which in my case happens to be AdobeRGB). If no profile is assigned then PS assumes that the working profile is the right one.
Only then did I assign (not convert) sRGB.

Prieni

Thanks for the judging Ralf and congrats to John and the others. I liked Galoot's (again!).

Quite understand your critique of mine. Wasn't going to put anything in, but saw there were so few entries on Saturday that I decided to submit this (though by the time I submitted on Sunday the count was up).

Thank you Prieni for the honerable mention & for the useful comments. I haven't managed to get my head around histograms yet so I'll look into that a bit more now & try & understand what it all means. Odd thing is that the colour of the carrots looked ok on my PC when I veiwed the photo normally but you are right they do seem a bit red. Must be gremlins hiding in the internet. Actually having read some of the comments by others about colour space etc. could it be that it was shot with the camera settings on Adobe RGB? (At least I think that is what it is set to), I will check when I get home. I didn't edit the photo other than to crop it a little. I took the shot in RAW & then saved it again to TIFF. Maybe there is more to this than meets the eye Once again thank you for the feedback & I was thrilled even to get an honerable mention
Caz

JR has really a very pleasing pic! So warm and smooth colours, eye rests on it and never gets bored. Splended!
TonyO Great! I wondered to whome will the grand prix go! Prieni got a good solution - a special price for you!
As third I liked Galoot! Blue is in its place. Simple, excellent! Love it.

As to my own red cabbage....I wasnt so sure about it. Still am not. After posting I found a Swedish turnip
Would it have been better entry? I like it better....

For me my cabbage and other pic look quite the same in forum, Gimp or XnView. But yes, my camera is really set on Adobe RGB. I do not know much about it ....
I guess I have to swich to sRGB then

Thanks for advices and .... waiting for the forest pics next

Have you not heard of the organic variety, "Scottish-Blue" ?

To be honest, NO colour added or taken away

Just wanted to get something into the competition as I'm away from
home again this week.

Writing this on my iPod in the bar, enjoying a 'Stella'

Congratulations to John, and well done Prieni for such detailed and interesting comments.

I'd left entering a bit late in the day, so the light wasn't bright enough for anything smaller than F5.6 if I wanted a fast enough shutter speed to be able to see the peas falling. Good job I didn't enter the shot I tried at F2.0...

Robert.