November # One Four Challenge – Finale

Sometimes you start a journey without a planned final destination. Like an old adventurer with too many miles under your feet, your hair combed by the wind and your clothes colored by the sun, you just can’t resist the road and what lies ahead.

When I found out that Robyn from Captivate Me planned to start a new photo challenge where every month participants would post-process one of their images in four different ways over the four weeks, I knew I wanted to try it. Now, at the end of the first month, I can say that I really enjoyed this journey, with all its curves, dead-end alleys and unscheduled bus stops.

This is my final image for the month of November. I knew from the start there would be a black&white version, that was one of the reasons why I picked this image. Post-processing was very easy, because I had a vision in my head from the start. Aside from cropping and flipping the image, I made slight angle adjustment, continuing in my experiment of different perspectives and compositions of the same image. That is the biggest thing I learned this month, how to turn images “upside-down” in a pursuit of an interesting POW.

I wanted it to be a gentle, dreamy edit, to accentuate the softness of the petals with that wonderful light. Hence the use of Orton, my favourite effect in PicMonkey. Orton tends to make image too dark, so I made some adjustments in brightness and contrast. My last step was Focal Soften effect, where by softening the background, I tried to bring some of the central details in focus.

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And here they are…The original and her four sisters. I would really appreciate some feedback and your votes in the poll bellow. Be sure to visit other participants (our tag is #onefourchallenge) and vote on their polls.

Dear friends, participants, followers, accidental visitors….with this we conclude November #One Four Challenge. Thank you for your visits, comments, likes, support, constructive criticism. I hope you enjoyed this journey and will continue to accompany me down the road. Our next road trip is December #One Four Challenge and I am happy to say I’ve already picked the image.