This is it! Final week for this month’s One Four Challenge. It has been fun to experiment again and find different ways of processing my image of the Banded Flutterer. This month, the challenge is hosted by Nic who has been stepping in for Robyn Gosby.
Week Four Interpretation
For this final week I wanted to really put the emphasis on the dragonfly wings and remove any distraction. To do so, I again used my Week One image in Photoshop and did the following:
- Created a new duplicate layer and desaturated it to turn the whole image into black and white
- Added a mask to the layer and applied a brush over the dragonfly to reveal its original colours
- Added both a curves layer and an exposure adjustment to bring luminosity to the wings
- Finally added my watermark
Here is the result:
I really like this version, as the dragonfly is the star. What do you think?
The progression over the four weeks is displayed in this slideshow.
Time to Vote!
Since it is our final week for November, I am including a poll and would love to know which interpretation is your favourite.
What is next?
As always, do check the work of other participants in the One Four Challenge. There are about 13 of us playing in our digital darkrooms and some of the work is quite inspiring.
This is the last challenge for not only this month but this year. During December we will do a review of what we learnt this year. So stay tuned!
Sv-Anui 
I love the watercolour one. I am inspired to do this as well after seeing your amazing results. I haven’t got enough spare time at the moment though. I had no idea that you could do such beautiful things! Is there a special programme I should use for when I do get the time?
Hi Viki – yes it’s great fun. I mainly use Photoshop & Lightroom and find these fantastic and very powerful when you learn to use them, but you have to pay for the combo ($120 a year). You can also find comparable and free photo editing software such as GIMP. And then there are plenty of free apps which are fun to use but you don’t have much control over how things turn out (Sketch Guru, Tanglex FX are free phone apps; Fotosketcher for laptop). It really depends on what you want to do. Yell out if you want more info.
Thanks! 🙂
Interesting how the black and white enhances the image
Yes when the surrounds are devoid of colour the star of the image shines.
I love how the crop really improved the image all month, and then each week you really pushed the creativity and got great images… it was hard to choose only one, but in the end I choose week four because it really made the dragonfly the star. 😀
Thanks so much, Nic, the feedback means a lot coming from a pro like you!
I don’t know about being a ‘pro’, I’ve just experimented a bit and have gotten some good results. 🙂 But thanks for the compliment. 😀
I surprised myself and chose this week’s edit. I love the way that the totally desaturated background highlights this spectacular dragonfly. It may not be “natural,” but I love it, Chris.
Thanks Mike, I wanted the dragonfly to really shine.
Chris really like this one, the desat background provides a great neutral space to let the colour and the SHAPE of the wings become prominent in this version – congrats!
Oh Stacey thanks so much for the kind feedback. I really liked this effect when I experimented, so glad you think it worked well.
brilliant work on this series and I can’t decide!!—ok, week 4!
My favourite too Cybele! 😊