Reed Grass Seed Head

This was captured beside a reservoir, with the camera tilted up slightly to make a background of the featureless sky. The image was converted to mono using Silver Efex, edited in PaintShop Pro, and given a sepia tone plus a sort of gentle vignette effect.

The camera used was a hand-held Pentax K-70 with the HD 55-300 PLM zoom attached: f=210 mm; ISO 200; AV Mode; f/8; 1/250s.

I would be most grateful for any comments ( + or - ) about the image:




Thank you.
Philip

On its own it would be just a bit of reed. That treatment makes it into a work of art. Nice.

Lovely to my eyes - there's a nice flow in the details that gives a gentle movement to the overall composition.

Gentle, peaceful, calming - I like it. Definitely art. Would look good big and hanging on a wall.

Just one niggling thing. The background is showing banding on my tablet, less conspicuous but still there on the big, calibrated monitor. Is it just me seeing it?

Steve

Thanks to all above for your comments.

I admit that I hadn't noticed banding, Steve, but I can now see it if I look very hard. This one looks fine to me when printed at A4 size - does it look any better than the first on your screen? :




Philip

Much better but still visible on the tablet. Can't see it on the big screen. Whatever you did seems to have worked.

Steve

Thank you, Steve.

Philip

An "arty" take on a familiar subject, yes! The low down viewpoint is effective too I find.

I wonder if you have a wider version Philip? I'm thinking of a vertical or square crop with more of the stem at the bottom ... ?

Sorry - there's no more of the stem in the original capture. I think I probably shot it like that to exclude other seed heads from the frame. The only change to the framing was to crop the sides, going from a 3:2 to a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Nevertheless, thank you for your comments and suggestions, Nigel. And it's great to see you back in action!

All the best.
Philip