Wikipedia:Picture peer review/Image:Traditional poi.jpg

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Traditional poi[edit]

Traditional poi, made from dried moss, wrapped in flax

This is the first time I've submitted an image here after watching things for a while, so go easy. This is a photo of traditional poi balls, used in New Zealand and a few other Polynesian cultures as an art form, especially in storytelling. There's a few reasons that I like this image:

  • As most modern poi aren't made of the traditional materials of moss and flax, it provides a helpful visual for the Poi (juggling) article, which is heavily biased towards contemporary use
  • The color, angle, and composition are visually attractive - to me, at least
  • The arrangement of the poi suggests the motion involved in using them. It looks like they're hanging, waiting to be spun. Kinetic feeling.

With that said, I haven't been entirely satisfied with post-processing. I loaded the RAW on a computer I don't usually use for post-process, and when I proof the colors, they appear over-saturated. The light color on the balls seem to blow out the detail in the center of two of the more prominent ones. Anyway, wanted to see what others had to say.

Comments:

  • Your other points aside, the first thing I notice on this is the "unreal" colour, confirmed by a quick look at the shadows and highlights, which seem to indicate a very over-processed shot. As you say, the raw conversion looks to have been way out and then pulled back to another colour balance afterwards. You certainly need to reconvert before submitting it. Composition is ok, though I don't get a big sense of movement with it, probably because it's far from clear what I'm looking at in the first place, so the other thing to look at is probably a decent caption. It's nice and sharp and might well be a whole different story if you presented it in a new light.

Seconder: