Too Much??

Hi, it's colorful and if it's for kids it's probably fine, the texture is a nice touch as well. For me, the doll and big wheel appear are out of place in that setting,

Davina, I did a series on playgrounds...loved the colors and shApes and fun feel. I would consider less is more. The color is already there, no need to deepen it and I'd control and limit the composition. It's tempting, I know... So much eye candy!!

too much of everything. for starters - there are issues with scale. the doll too big, the bike too small. and you wouldn't find either one there. it's a play ground after all, and that bike thing couldn't ride on it anyway. plus the shadows and highlights are in the wrong spots.

as an image without the extra stuff it's also very busy. it doesn't need to be super saturated like that, the sky is also kind of odd looking.

i would remove the extras and make this a black and white.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

The texture of the sky distracts for me. Only you can decide what suits your vision though. :-)

Mike, the doll was going to go bigger... I just saw Annabelle and had dolly on the brain. I so wanted to incorporate it in the image without going to macabre. I'm going to have another go at it and see what happens. We me luck.

almost any abandoned looking doll is kind of creepy. usually when placing items it should make sense. a playground, with toys and no kids is a sign of the rapture. (the rapture is a large bird that takes children).

anything that's distracts from the main story will be hard to understand. if you play the trike in the middle of a black top, that would make sense. if the doll was on a bench, or forest or something. it could be ok. but you have to deal with scale, the stitching on that thing would have to be like rope if it was that large.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Davina,

There are a good number of artists here who do drawings and paintings of surrealistic scenes that are cluttered.

Those were my first thoughts when I saw this piece. I like your photo better than those hand made surreal scenes.

Just me, but I would leave it as is. Big doll and little tricycle make it even more surreal.

Dave

At first I thought it was a lot, but the more I look, I think its pretty cool and funky. If too much is your style, then run with it. I actually like the wild scale of everything. As one other said, the only thing that standout to me is the sky. From afar its a little "storm a brew'n". :) stay with what you what you love!

Others have reacted from mostly an artistic viewpoint.
While I agree that the colors may be too much, I'll add that (to put it nicely) customers may be looking for a wide variety of styles. Sometimes when you see what's bought, it can stretch your normal limits. I would put most "grungy" HDR photography in that category, for example. But that's only me, many paying customers like it, for reasons I can't quite fathom.

The more important question to ask yourself is "Five years from now, will I be glad or sad that I included this in a portfolio representing my work?".
To soften this issue, Consider Gallery (folder) titles such as:
Off The Wall
Experimental
Whimsy
and other names that may imply that you are departing from the main body of your work.

My main artistic reaction what that the style was not consistent. To make the composition more unified, conceptually, I think that the contrast and saturation needs to be kicked up a bit on the doll and perhaps the big wheel. They fit in the imaginary context that this doll is the girl who brought the big wheel to ride. Posing the doll ON the big wheel might and perhaps adding a toy puppy might strengthen this conceptual theme.

I think the reason it looks busy everything is on a similar scale the image is somewhat flat with not a lot of depth because of being shot in the bright sunlight. The painted shadows are trying to fix a lot of problems and look too contrived. When adding objects I find I need to superimpose a texture(s) (I often use a white layer on grain merge at low percentage to lighten he whole effect when using other textures) on top of the whole image otherwise it is almost impossible to integrate them in my opinion. I feel certain Mike would agree. The big wheel is too soft (try using a sharpener on it) the doll is too dark and needs to be brightened.

If you put textures or use a vignette over the image you may be able to use the image above and can adjust the image on the curves to get the right effect.

A wide angle lens may be the answer or getting closer to a ride should you re-shoot. It is a neat playground I would revisit and shoot it again at a lot of different angles maybe an hour after or before the golden hours on either end of the day so the image doesn't have to be darkened and give it more depth.

Although the trees may not have leaves it may look more surreal, maybe pump up or down the colors of the playground and objects or color isolate the object against the grey of the playground, just some thoughts. I think you are close but a better image will make it fantastic.

I agree with Tamara about the sky. I'd tone it down a bit. I'm also seeing several vertical lines (poles?) that don't seem to belong in the scene. On second glance, I started to like it--and appreciate your boldness. Lots of good ideas on how you might improve it, but only you know your vision for it. Going with my gut feeling (photographing the underside of a huge umbrella to create an abstract) recently brought in a sale, so I encourage you to follow your heart as you try to stay objective about your work.

Oh wow, thank you everyone for your opinions!! I've had a couple of days away from this image and I'm revisiting it with fresh eyes. I noticed something else, the image in this post is darker than the image in my gallery for some reason. Did anyone else notice that?

There is a big difference in color! I like the gallery one much better. If you changed out the image it takes time for the image in discussions to change (sometimes hours). I think it works quite well, there is a lot more depth, shadows show up much better and the doll is brighter. I would just lighten the texture on the sky and sharpen the big wheel.

Davina:
1. Is your monitor calibrated? (This is probably not the problem, but when you get into these problems, it's good to not have that variable causing problems.)
2. I haven't been around much recently, but you should be aware of an image file property called "color space".
Unfortunately, last I knew, there was no one optimal color space.
For optimal printing color accuracy, you should use Adobe RGB 1998 color space, because that's what the FAA printing process uses.
For optimal monitor viewing accurcay, you should use sRGB, because that makes it look best on the screen.

Pick ONE. :-(

I totally agree with David Bridburg and Slade Roberts.

I like just the way it is. I don't know what you were trying for but the it is very much I love the surrealism of it. I would wouldn't change much if anything.

You can tweak the color more to your liking, my liking would be a little more vibrant colors but that is really just nit-picking on my part. You have to be happy with what you see, not me or anyone else.

I could see a series of paintings around the playground some more surrealistic, some more realistic.

Over all I really like just the way it is.

I like it. The doll actually gives depth to the picture. When I saw it my first reaction was of a little girl playing on a playground. She slides down the slide then hops on her big wheel and rides off to the next thing she is going to play on. Her head and eyes are facing toward the big wheel. Looks like excitement over the number of possibilities of things she can have fun climbing on and jumping off of.