Emerging Color

It's been forever and a day when I think I last posted in this gallery.  There is always some great work being posted in here.

Back when I was a moderator, I struggled with PA images in landscape - at least deciding what was considered PA.  I always would fall back on part of the definition in the Posting Guidelines:  "... obvious artistic renditions of nature."  

With that, I think this belongs in Photo Art.  True, b&w images are considered standard and not manipulated, but I think the moment I combine the b&w with the color in an obvious fashion, to me this is a "rendition" and no longer a representation of nature.

ANYWAY... I spied this sage late in the day while leaving the overflow parking lot at South Tufa at Mono Lake.  I knew at the time I wanted to return and photograph this wonderful bush - and knew it would be b&w, with the shape, forms and contrasts.  Once I got back and began processing images, I realized the little flowers on the sage were just not translating the way I need for a good b&w presentation.  Then I recall a comment from Igor a while back about the dominance of the color yellow. So I decided to embrace the yellow and try and isolate that against the monochrome of the bush.  I painted the color back in on a layer mask, easy enough to do, but it also brought back in blue, cyan and other colors.  So I just added another saturation layer and desaturate the other colors except for th yellow.

I'm really happy with this, but as always would love to hear comments, feedback and critique from others.

thanks!

Lon

Of course you must click on the larger view.