Please help me with PP on this curvy shot

broby6

This is a recent shot of some fields in N California. I was struck by the symmetry of the curves and that is what I want to emphasize. #1 is the original pic and #2 is a cropped and enhanced(?) version. I felt that there was too much extraneous detail in #1, so the questions are 1) does the crop work or can it be improved, and 2) is there too much sharpening and color enhancement? I'm really a neophyte at PP.
Thanks, broby6

#1





#2

bham

Maybe a crop like this. Not a regular size, and slightly rotated.

Richard

broby6 wrote:

1) does the crop work or can it be improved, and 2) is there too much sharpening and color enhancement?

The crop is a major improvement. Bham is right that it could use a slight clockwise rotation. I would move the selection up a bit to show a bit of horizon and eliminate the rough ground in the lower right.

The color and sharpening are also good. Maybe just a bit more shadow contrast to bring out the texture of the furrows.

You're definitely on the right track.

Regards,

Scott_Quier

Clone out the building and poles, rotate as indicated by bham, and crop as you did the first example.

pathfinder

broby, welcome to dgrin.

This image suffers from a number of issues, but does have appealing lines, curves and repetition themes. It suffers from too much unappealing foreground, low contrast, and lack of color saturation.

I cropped of the bottom, kept the mountains in the background, rotated the image a bit, and increased the contrast and color a bit in the image. Basically I did separate curves for the far distant background and the green fields in the foreground.

I downloaded the image you posted, opened it in RAW to get a warmer lighting, and then did the curves in Photoshop CS3

pyrtek

The graphic nature of this image just begs for a B&W conversion.

broby6

Thanks everyone for you helpful suggestions, examples and encouragement. When I took the picture I only had eyes for the curving furrows, and didn't pay enough attention to overall composition. The examples you've provided improve the shot a lot, but I now can see that original had too many faults to post process it into a really good image. It really helps to get the perspective of others when you are learning like this.
Pathfinder, your treatment helps to minimize the background mountains, which act as a second focal point and distract from the curves. I hadn't thought of monochrome, but pyrtek's version shows that it is tonal quality and not color that is the key element here. I also like bham's minimalist approach. I'm playing around with a similar approach and if I get anything that works well I'll post a followup.
broby6

bham

As you said in your original post you liked the symmetry and wanted to emphasize that. I believe the buildings, mountains, etc distract from that. Not sure if you can get a better angle next time you shoot (ie a higher vantage point to isolate just the fields and to have less background).

beetle8

Crop
I like the B&W the best The one above is unaturally colored. If there is enough info in the file try cropping everything but the field