Still Life With Summer Fruits

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been looking forward to creating a seasonal still life image with summer fruits, and here it is finally - somewhat late in the season I suspect.
This time I didn't really have an idea of the composition for my image, all I knew was that it was to contain as much summer fruit as possible, and it was going to be about the abundance of summer and its explosion of vivid colours.
I went out and spent a lot of money buying different fruits. It proved really hard coming up with a balanced and pleasing composition with so much fruit, and I ended up not using all of it, and not all of the kinds I bought. I didn't use the cherries (they were too dark) and the slice of melon (just couldn't fit it in). I thought yet again of the saying "the simpler the better" and how true it is. After what felt like hours of arranging and rearranging the fruit I decided to use two round dishes and arrange the fruit in two circles - berries on top and other fruit on bottom.
In the postprocessing I began to create my usual dark(ish), rustic, country look. Then, suddenly I wasn't happy; it wasn't what I really wanted; it didn't look summery enough. I felt an urge to create a light, high key, ethereal image that would shout summer at the viewer, so I set out to work from scratch again and ended up with the image below.

 

I asked G to tell me which version he preferred and after a brief hesitation he said "definitely the darker one". I felt disappointed for a moment, but when I looked at my original version again I began to understand why he liked it better. After all, it has a more natural look, the colours are lot better presented, and it is the style of editing that comes naturally from me.


However, I still like the high key image. I like it because I managed to produce something different which perhaps is not as good as my usual work, but I believe is interesting nevertheless. I've decided to keep and share both versions alongside each other, and am very much curious to know which one people prefer in general.





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