Standing out

Here is my very rough attempt with color on black and white, and so on. The first picture is the original, second is the (obvious) manipulation. Does this look good? Anything I should be doing better? Subject decent enough to do this on?

Let me know,

I'm open for anything.

Jared

Jared buddy, this is beautiful. You have beat me already. My crap doesn't come close to this. The colors are beautiful, the contarst of the B&W is just right, the subject has depth and it looks natural. 2 small niggles however: You should have colored the leaf infront of the petals. That would have helped to blend the flower into the image a bit more and keep it from looking pasted in. Also the edeges of the flower are a bit to well defined. You need to blend them a bit with the blur tool. Otherwise I love it!

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Originally Posted by jar_e

Here is my very rough attempt with color on black and white, and so on. The first picture is the original, second is the (obvious) manipulation. Does this look good? Anything I should be doing better? Subject decent enough to do this on?

Let me know,

I'm open for anything.

Jared

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Jared,

I find the manipulated version to be much more striking than the original (and I am not such a big fan of color against b&w work despite my deep appreciation of Gary's can series and my few personal attemps with the technique) so that must tell you something!

Actually, I think that the picture is very succesful and truly looks natural.
Contrarily to Almo, I don't think that the flower edges need more blur. I mean, I guess that it would still looks right if you were to blur the edges some more but the picture already looks very natural to me. I agree about partly colorizing the front leaf though. It would have to be a gradient from color to b&w and it may be delicate to achieve.

Seb

Jared... Actually I can't decide which i like the most. They are both beautiful! You did a great job on the selective coloring, especially your first try! My suggestion was going to be to also color the flower in the back but not as bright.. much more subtle and you could also try only slightly desaturating the background so it still holds a tad of that gorgeous pink color... just for another flavor. Or you could have everything slightly muted looking and the front flower containing more contrast, light and sharpness.. Anyway you decide to go will be good because its a good composition and subject to begin with.
Kit

Both are great photos :) good work .

I love the soft natural color you have achieved in this photograph. Nice textures and the manipulated version is well done.

Wow, 6 hours of this thread and I already have half a dozen responses! Thank you everybody. I'd respond to everybody's personally, but I have to go make pizzas at school in 5 minutes, but let me say this. I'll definately try some other things in color, either a leaf, or another flower in the background. I was afraid that just having one was too 'in your face', but had trouble deciding which to make color too. I will try all these, and everybody, thank you for all your comments!!

Jared