Stills

Doug, excellent image. Would that be a roadside cross for an auto accident? I've been pondering a book project of roadside crosses for a couple of years, but I've never been able to my gear myself for the emotional struggle.
 

Colin,

Thank you for the invitation, very glad to join the group.

Matt,

The image is indeed a road side memorial and an image that I made in Neveda. I did not anticipatge the emotional struggles when I started this series, it was more of a documenatary about Folk Art Scupltures that occur here in the U.S. A lot of my subsequent angst with the series is docuemented in my blog, Singular Images (www.singularimages.wordpress.com)
 

Welcome Doug.

It might be the image size but the flowers are a bit indistinct, however the cross stands out well and the halo of light cloud draws my eye down to the cross. The monochromatic treatment adds to the drama.

Local authorities here are trying to prevent roadside tributes as they claim they can distract drivers. Near my home there is a hill now locally known as Tribute Hill as a father planted a tree where his son was killed on a motorcycle. The poignant thing is the father keeps fresh flowers at the base of the tree. I bet the flowers are there now.
 

Wow! Excellent lighting, contrast, subject. Very emotional. Everything is so real, like I can feel the textures just by looking at the picture.
 

Welcome Doug. There are a lot of these in Chile and Peru, but then their driving leaves a lot to be desired. They have a reasonably common characteristic that the artificial flowers that get put there initially tend to fade so the overall impression is white with maybe blue surviving longest of any colour.

The elements here do come together very well and I like the mountain range darkening away to the right. I do observe some strange bits of colour (dots of magenta and green) in the inch or two above the horizon on the right.
 

Having seen this larger on your site, the colour marks I mentioned above are not visible so they must be an artefact from reduction: the picture looks more impressive in a larger size.
 

I agree with John's comment about the 'original'.

The version here is showing JPEG artefacts, which might account for the coloured banding. I also see a white border to the hill sky boundary which might be over sharpening. Sharpening can the make the image difficult to reduce in file size due to the added contrast at edges, hence the JPEG artefacts.
 

Welcome, Doug! Your first post here is quite impressive, despite the minor issues involved in the reduction of it to a less than ideal size. The sepia tone adds a sort of "earthiness". The dramatic sky and lighting suits the subject well. I'm sure this is spectacular on a large scale.
 

Thank you all for a very nice welcome!

Regarding the quality of this image, I am having some issues with the medium-jpg's from PS. I agree that I need to work on the sharpening, as was pointed out, not an issue with the large-jpg's for my web site. I'll revisit Colins notes and my PS CS3 "manual":- )

So the potatoe salad is about ready and we are off to the grandkids for this holiday, then with friends to a concert with the fireworks.
 

What an interesting subject matter. In Tokyo on my travels I sometimes stumble across little roadside shrines to traffic victims - mainly flowers but sometimes little portable shrines.

I need to spend more time looking through your website and this project in particular. For this shot I think the glow effect works well even if a little predictable in its location. The opening of the clouds nicely surrounds the foreground scrub, cross and flowers. At this size it's a little difficult to make out all the components but even so, and in concurrence with others, I'm sure this really pops at larger sizes. Great detail up front in the stones which add to the desolute impression this region gives me.

Welcome to Stills and look forward to seeing more of your work.