Experimenting with color
This weekend I glanced outside in the morning and noticed small drops left on my Japanese maple bush outside. This meant only one thing – it had rained the previous night. I rushed out with my camera as dew drops are one of my favorite subjects. However this time I decided to try something new. The last several times we had drops here, there were no flowers in bloom. Now we had ample primroses available – so I plucked one and placed it a short distance behind a dew drop. The shots were for the most part successful – though my wife still doesn’t like them. 
Still, I decided it was time to play around with Photoshop and see what I could do.
One thing that has really torn me has been whether to try out focus stacking. Last week I sent out a link to a very well known photographer who uses focus stacking with his dew drops. Interestingly, most of my fellow photographers seemed to think the technique made the shots look too fake. I have yet to try focus stacking, and I did not try it last weekend. I think I prefer the natural look a bit better – though in the future I may give it a try so I can see the results for myself.
This day I decided to try playing with black and white images. I almost never use black and white in photos. While I agree it does significantly improve a number of photos – I generally prefer color myself. I decided to try juxtaposing a black and white image with a part of the image in color – as I have seen several very effective photos that do this. This was my first attempt.
I rather liked this shot, but my wife hated it. Her feeling was this shot is too fake (of course! It’s Photoshopped!) and asked that I make the following one.
She liked this one much better, though I’m not sure I like it. I rather prefer the first black and white juxtaposition over the second one. What do you think?
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Tags: dew drop, macro, photography, primrose, reflection
I’m going to have to agree with your wife on this one
To me having the coloured stem grounds the droplet in reality, in the first image the droplet just “hangs in space” which can obviously be the intent but just doesn’t appeal to me in the same way.
I prefer the colour version. But from the grayscale ones, I like the second one.
Those are some really cool pictures. The grayscale one with the colored flower really contrasts well I think, but I’m no expert.
Thanks for all the comments! I sent these to the photography discussion alias at work and most people also did not like the selective color experiment. Oh well… That’s what an experiment is for…