Honestly, I think I’m better with flours than I am with flowers. With the endless array of flower photos out there in the world, how’s a guy to separate himself from the pack? I see lots of nice pictures of flowers, but I very rarely find them inspiring. Most photographers shoot flowers at one time or another. With good reason. Flowers are remarkably complex, have surprising shapes and provide readily accessible subjects for camera jockeys like me. I’m never quite satisfied with my results though. I guess I better keep trying.
These folks on the other hand seem to have it nailed. These are just a few really nice examples of flower shots I’ve seen recently that have inspired me to raise the bar:
– Adrian’s Unknown Flower
– Sasi’s Weed?
– David’s Field of White
– Lynda’s Petal
– Emily’s Dandelion.
I guess now that Spring has firmly sprung up here in central Alberta I should be practicing my flower shooting skills. Despite the arrival of Spring, I captured this image indoors at the Muttart Conservatory in their feature pyramid (they have four themed pyramid greenhouses) which is currently running a celtic theme.
Processing notes: I processed this image a couple of days ago and didn’t take notes and don’t remember what I did. Poorly done if I’m including processing notes in all my blog entries! Looking at the photo though, I can see that I cropped it from the original composition. I believe I did the majority of the rest of the work in Silver Efex Pro where I converted it to B&W, selectively adjusted shadows and highlights in the background, brought out a bit of the texture in the flower, split toned the image (blue/yellow) and then added the border.
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Thank you for the compliment and link Mike. 🙂 I like the way you capture this flower and the processing. Not all flowers can look good in B&W. But this one works well. The only thing that I would do is to get rid of those two bright spots. They seem to distract from the flower.
Funny. You should have seen those bright spots before I toned them way down! They looked like spot lights. Interesting that you find them distracting. I kind of liked the balance they gave the image, but I’ll have to try a version with the spots removed entirely. I’ll post the two versions on flickr. Thanks for the comment.
I’m in love.
Any desire to trade photos for pottery?
Are you kidding? I love your pottery! Anytime!
Thank you so much Mike, I am really touched that you would link to my photo. I always seem to get drawn back to photographing flowers, I just love the colours and textures. However, I really do love your photo here, the angle at which you have shot, the detail and the DOF..wonderful!!
My pleasure Lynda – I always appreciate a great shot, but sometimes I allow myself to feel too busy to point out the great work of others. Thanks for the feedback!
Nice post Mike,don´t belittle yourself- i like this shot, you´ve done a good job on this as always! i always think of flowers and insects as aliens in our midst and this one is really “Day of the Triffids”-it looks like it´s walking! I only photograph flowers for fun and because it´s a challenge (and i have a Macro lens) and they look good on white walls as a print! or as a postcard or screensaver- with flowers, never forget natures colours!
You should have seen the rest of the pictures from the day. Not as many keepers as there should have been! Glad you like today’s shot.
Oh wow, what an honour, thank you so much Mike! I actually rather like the two bright spots, makes me think there’s a pair of eyes looking up (hey, it’s Friday and after work…my logical side has been officially turned off)! 😛