Park Avenue, which goes from 14th St. to above 96th St., is almost a divided highway, since the lanes are separated by a median like this one, where there are flowers and trees planted. This alone makes it my favorite street to walk on in NYC and, somewhat luckily, it’s the avenue I follow if I choose to walk home.
Last week the tulips all lost their petals, and this little guy was one of the sole survivors. When I went back the next day, it had lost its petals, too; it’s just further proof that all beauty is ephemeral and that which isn’t ephemeral isn’t beautiful.
4 Comments
May 3, 2006 at 5:43 pm
Gorgeous.
In a sad way…
May 3, 2006 at 8:53 pm
Great perspective. Interesting how close the palette is to “Flare.” I feel like the greens could have used a very slight, darkening push, however: their mutedness is perhaps more in tune with your “message”, and indeed is quite realistic as far as color accuracy goes, but I still feel as though the tulips look ever so slightly overexposed, even though they’re clearly not on a technical level. Still, amazingly sharp shot and with a great little slice of background beyond the flower stalks. The contrast, too, is superb. Nice work.
May 3, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Eh, I’m vacillating on my “greens” comment. The leaves are exactly the color they would be in nature. So perhaps I should just be quiet. But I would just be curious as to how the scene would look with my suggestion above.
May 4, 2006 at 8:30 am
Nate, thanks for the comments. I must say, I was exTREMEly careful with the greens here and, viewing on my work computer now, the colors just aren’t what I want them to be. I think this is a situation where calibration is crucial.
That being said, I did try my best to control it so the leaves would be exactly life-like, so calibration may not be the issue here. I tried darkening the greens and saturating them more, but the red didn’t pop quite as much, visually. And then there’s the “message.” Either way, I’ll send you some JPGs.
Also, I hadn’t noticed until you wrote your comment how close the palette is to “Flare.” Interesting!
But what I found most interesting about your point is that, looking back through my recent photos, I’ve noticed that almost all of my color shots have featured dominant complementary colors: red/green, blue/yellow, purple/yellow and orange. Basically ever since I bought the D2x, my work has been rather color-centric (probably the amazing sensor compared with the D70…), especially since Hawaii / Spring. Thanks for pointing it out!