Thistle Kingdom

Yesterday, my friend and I went out to a deserted road full of thistles, blackberry bushes, butterflies, dandelions... you get the drift. Everything there was beautifully overgrown and it was hard trying to translate that to the camera. This is when I wish when cameras were as good as our eyes because nothing can imitate the eye's perception of color and clarity.

My friend and I were trying to throw thistles in a "artful" way but we mostly got frustrated instead.

A more close-up view of a seeding thistle.

I changed the color palette for this picture to make it look more wild and eccentric

This butterfly was excruciatingly hard to capture and it still turned out blurry! I think my friend has a better picture though :)

The smaller butterflies were harder to capture but I like the contrast of the butterfly and the thistle plant to all the surrounding greenery.

I zoomed in on the butterfly and made it yellow and green while making the thistle plant a teal color.

 

This was the same yellow butterfly from above. I just increased the contrast and saturation

There were TONS of blackberry bushes along that road. We later discovered a blackberry forest when we walked in among the thistles. I changed the color palette of the unripe blackberries and leaves. The ripe blackberry is still black.

I just changed the contrast and saturation for this picture too. This picture of the thistles makes them look very complacent and docile, but I promise you, they sting if you brush up too closely to them!

I just changed this picture with a wavy pattern

I had to edit this picture SO MUCH so in the end, I just took away the color and and increased the contrast by 70%.

Next to the blackberry forest, we discovered many passion flowers. If you look closely, you can see the insects crawling inside.

While we were walking back to my friend's house I discovered this beautiful flower. No edits were made.

 This is my friend's cat; brain. I think he was looking for a insect of some sorts. He is a very inquisitive and active boy :)

This is brain yawning as I stroked him behind the ears.

 This is an interesting spider web we found among the thistles

This is another interesting insect with a upturned butt

This picture was just so washed out and sad looking I had to make major edits with the contrast and saturation, so the whole picture does look a bit fake. However I like that the thistle seeds stand out more against the sky now.