Poppies

Poppy pictures. I was a week or two late and most had gone to seed, so adjusted my viewpoint to get the best out of what was still there

Viewed best on Flickr by clicking on the title


Poppy by Alan Wennington, on Flickr


Sunset Poppies by Alan Wennington, on Flickr


Poppy Field by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

The colour ones I like very much indeed. Not so sure if black and white works though, it loses all that wonderful colour but the remaining image looks a bit confused.

Love the contrasting red on blue of the first one. The warm tones, light and sky of the second one works perfectly for me - although I may have been tempted to crop the left side a bit - just to the left of the large poppy. For some reason my eye is drawn to the space to the left of this flower.

I agree with John on the b+w

Carl

Thanks guys. I think you're right v the B&W.

See what you mean on #2 Carl. If I print it I may do so as above and look at potential crops for mounting

Looking at it again, I think the B&W would be improved by a letterbox format similar to #2.

Any better? Or give up on it

B&W Poppies by Alan Wennington, on Flickr

The colour versions for me, #2, Sunset Poppies is just fab

The first is fab! Love the boldness of the subject and the oof background gives context and depth. On the second I suggest pulling the hue on the greenery more towards, well, green. I find the warm white balance, which works on the sky, washes over too strongly on the ground.

+1

Love the first one. With second I'd use grad filter in lightroom to get sky like the one you got and proper green on the bottom.

On the side note: how can I find out where are poppy or rapeseed or anything like that around where I live? I looked at google maps to see where are the fields around me and then drove about 30 miiles one day and couldn't find anything good.

Not sure about finding poppies gfurm, but I've heard those grad filters in LR are good, yeah

Thanks guys. Appreciate the feedback.

Have to say I purposely didn't want greens. Maybe I'll get a couple of different versions printed off and see which I prefer on paper.

What about the letter box B&W does that work?

Hi Alan

The colour ones on this thread and on Flickr are great, well up to your usual standards! However, I really don't like the BW ones, either in the letterbox or standard format. I think John hit the nail on the head when he said they looked confused, they need the colour to bring order to the mass of stems, flower and seed heads and also to provide contrast with the sky.

Regards
David

Thanks David. So much for arty farty

Made me wonder this, before there was any colour film invented, did anyone actually bother to take any photos of flowers (or fields with poppies) ... Was there any point at all to such images then?

I think you'll find people photographed virtually everything before colour film, although that was a very long time ago now. The "focus" was obviously on form rather than colour.

Even after colour film became readily (although expensively) available, black-and-white flower photography was common in posters, calendars, postcards and specialist publications. Those were the days of carrying around a bunch of colour filters to lighten or darken various parts of the flower to produce the effect you wanted.

There are some splendid B&W flower shots in the internet.

Al