I would love to have a lavender farm near us, but sadly there are none close by. You have brought out the purple of the lavender, but I do find myself looking for a clear subject in the image - shame we can't also record the fragrance. You said the smoke from the reactor was unsettling (hopefully it was steam, not smoke from a fire!), but the extra contrast of your processing has also emphasised the steam - was this your intention? Of course it could easily be removed with the Photoshop remove tool if you wanted, but then it would not quite be the scene as you saw it.   Posted: 11/12/2024 12:01:07

Your image reminded me of a winery about an hour away from my home that also has fields of lavender. Your image reminds me that I should go back there and take some images and have a glass of wine. In all seriousness, the smell of the lavender field must have been intoxicating. Interesting that the clouds in the sky and lavender plants are angling toward the left. I like the mixture of greens, purples and blues in the image. The removal of the wires and poles in the final image was a good idea. As far as the smoke from the nuclear reactor in the image goes, have you ever thought to put a rocket from Elon Musk's inventory of space rockets and place it in the clouds of smoke? Then, it would look like a space ship just took off in a cluster of clouds and no one would know there was a nuclear reactor nearby! All kidding aside, Jay, this is a nice image.
  Posted: 11/18/2024 00:53:02

As someone who has often traveled to Provence in France, I'm very familiar with the colors of lavender. The mix with the beige herbs is interesting; in Provence, it's tidier, neater, without the overly beautiful grass. The craziness of the lavender goes well with this little "nuclear" cloud, which looks like smoke from a factory chimney or perfume distillery, for example... You can almost smell it in your nose. Thank you for taking us on a journey - beautiful things are everywhere to those who know how to look.   Posted: 11/18/2024 01:47:45

Jay, I've never been to a lavender field/farm before and have seen some wonderful images from them. I would ask, what is the main focus, the story about? If it is the field, then you should have done some macro photography. I have cropped it to tell a story about the beauty of nature coexisting with the hand of man, the steam clouds from the nuke plant. I also cropped the image and used a gradient on the lavender to dark it a bit to bring out more the color. I would also tone down the blue at top left to somewhat match the original so as to not make it so dominant in the image. I set the flumes on the right third. It's hard creating good foreground in a situation like this and often photographers get in close to the flowering plant/shrub and then focus stack the composition.   Posted: 11/23/2024 18:37:12

Very well done Jay. To me, the story here is all about the colour of the lavender field. The purple, the green and the blue all work well together. The steam/smoke also tells us that just over the trees is civilization. Yes by all means, it can be "removed" or "cropped" no problem with either approach. I also think that if you prefer not to have it there in your image, just don't include that section at the time of capture. In an image like this one if you loose some lavender, trees and sky, there's still plenty left to tell the story. So, depending on what's outside the frame that we can't see, I would have also taken a few shots with my camera turned just a little.   Posted: 11/25/2024 02:38:13