Balloons in Waiting

[waha]

At their recent visit, my grandchildren played with some water balloons. The surviving balloons were left scattered around--and caught my eye.

Your comments will be appreciated.

[Clactonian]

An interesting idea Wayne, but I'm not sure it works. Somehow the bench gets in the way.
Obviously part of it needed to be in the composition because of the balloons on the arm and I can understand that you wanted to include those discarded on the grass but is that the problem?
It is easy to be critical when I have no idea of the constraints under which you were working or what you were out to achieve, so forgive my intrusion.
Just trying to be honest.

[waha]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for your observations. I agree that the lower part of the composition is rather bulky and dark. I just don't know whether cropping it out would improve the shot since it is the darkness of the backrest that makes the bright colors of the balloons stand out all the more.



Anyway, I've done some cropping just to see what would happen. The cropped image still retains the three interesting diagonals and leaves the bench recognizable. But have we now reduced the strong contrast too much by eliminating the blackness? Has the image now lost its punch?

What think?

[jiro]

Wayne, have you tried considering to rotate the image clockwise to make it as a portrait shot? The reason I asked this is because the angle looks a bit awkward to me. I can't stop ignoring my tendency to look at it at an oblique angle due to the orientation of the shot. If this is my shot I would rotate it 90 degrees clockwise and then introduce a lot of texture and make the shot darker to complement the old nature of the chair. The grass seemed to lose its definition by becoming so soft and losing the edges. I would probably try to recover the edges using a high contrast layer set to vivid light mode. Lastly, to keep the focus on the balloons, I would introduce a lighting effect layer centered on it and let the light taper outward, more like a heavy vignette effect. Here's an example of what I am trying to share if you don't mind.

[waha]

Hi Jiro,

Now why didn't I think of that?
I think the 90 degree rotation is an elegant solution to some of the image's problems.

As for the rest of your suggestions, I will have to read them more than once. I'm just beginning to find my way into working with layers in PSE9.

Thanks for your interest and help!

[FrankMi]

Hi Wayne, there is something about the original image that just doesn't feel right to me. I think that the large amount of very sharp grass is taking my eye off the baloons on the arm of the chair. How do you think it would look if the beautiful wood patterns and baloons on the arm of the chair remained sharp, and the grass and bottom of the chair were enough out of focus to render the baloons on the ground as random patterns of soft colors?

Oh. Wait a sec. I just saw Willie's idea of rotating and darkening the chair. Much better. You can forget what I said.

[epmi314]

Willie's edit is solid. Great original just needed a little tweek.

[puspa kumara]

Nice shot,more than balloons i like the point of view.chair is highlight than the balloons.colors are really touched,

[KeithH]

A shot I would never have seen and the rotation really works, well spotted