01-19-11 – Color Popping Naturally

I have no intention of using the photo, I just thought it was funny and kind of appropriate. The walk produced a bunch of usable photos and a lot of curious looks.

I’m not the mod but in general, effects that apply evenly across the entire image are okay as long as they don’t produce unnatural results. And to answer your other question about inversion, plenty of people used inversion in the original Color Popping theme so I’ve no reason to think you can’t.

Yes to both ravnostic. I just brightened the white background in one of mine. Like Kestrana said, as long as it is applied evenly across the entire image. And concrete is a great idea!!! I knew you would come up with something interesting!!!

I give total credit to Kes on the inversion idea, I’d have never thunk it had she not mentioned it–although as it turns out, my grey rocks STILL have not found a contest home 🙁 (I think I have better options, with my photo excursion shots today.)

As for concrete…I kinda think there will be lots of that, I just hope mine is comparable to others (okay–I hope it’s bett-ar, but who am I kidding? The competitors in this forum are not to be underestimated!! :shock:)

Mopsy, you may expect an PM from me with my potentials before the contest goes live–just to be sure I’m not out of bounds or anything like that. Maybe even tonight–I have to regear my clock to a night schedule before Wednesday, having regeared to a day schedule for various reasons, so I’ll be up late.]

My discovery of the ‘lost’ filters I got with my camera is, I think, a real boon. This contest, and “5 is Right Out”, had me really stressing–both are themes in which I didn’t think I could do well, comparatively. Final decisions aren’t made yet (there’s still time for ‘5IRO’, and certainly for ‘CPN’, of course), but I really feel like I’m starting to get ‘a groove on’.

//Voters, of course, may disagree. But then, I’m learning it’s about MY growth as a photographer, and MY satisfaction with my pictures.

///as long as I can keep my averages steady or climbing. 8)

Ok, just to clarify. The theme description says this:

Take a photo that appears to be black and white/grayscale with the exception of one object or color.

Certainly the one object or color could be located in the “background,” but the theme wording suggests it should be a single object or single color, not multiple objects of the same type just colored differently, or a multi-colored background with grayscale foreground/objects. It just sounds like we’re going to now allow for a lot more colors than the theme wording allows for, but maybe I’m confused by the different examples being offered.

I’m going for one element beyond the black/white/grey (one object) or one background beyond it. If a red rose were the color element, there will be different hues of red, depending on whether a petal is in direct light, or shadowed behind another petal. And I suppose the stem may be somewhat in the frame, which would appear green.

For backgrounds, imagine a bokehed green field beyond an aged-grey wooden fence–there would be variation to the green, to some extent.

Neither are shots I’ve taken or planned, but this is my understanding of the theme, and how I’ve (thus-far) been directing my efforts. Am I misunderstanding incorrectly?

Leicalens, maybe I’m too easy, but I think both of those are fine. I was trying to decide about an orange mushroom in the woods with mostly black twigs, dark shadows and mud around it. I too was worried about a slight brown tone to a couple of the twigs and it’s my theme. The mushroom is definitely popping, just like in your blue on concrete and the flower petals. What say the rest of you.

here’s one of my wanna-beez:

yes? no? There’s variation in color, but it’s one object, and that’s going to happen, no?

Another example is blue sky as a background–angle is everything in a blue sky color, even though it’s all ‘blue’.

Leical, I just had another thought about your blue pipes. If you cropped the right hand side past the rust, you would not have an issue.

Right. The picture I posted was actually straight from the camera, albeit resized. If I were to use it, I would crop out the rust. However, I’m not sure that some blue pipes will really garner the votes 😉
Anyway, thanks for responding; it gives me a much better idea of what goes.
My own feeling on this is that the pictures will speak for themselves, and if the voters feel that a colour isn’t really popping, they won’t vote for it.
That may be too optimistic of me…