Lady Slippers

[Norm Dulak]

Canon PowerShot S90
ISO 800; f/4.5, 1/400 sec.
Std. CS6 adjustments, crop

This Paphiopedilum sp orchid was photographed on Easter Sunday, in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory. A panel with a photo of an out of focus green meadow was placed behind the flowers to provide a clean background.

All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Norm

[John Robinson]

Norm
Nice wit hthe two in . Ifind the BG a little monotonous aand bright but no big deal. Grand shot of a great plant. Very hard species to grow by the way !
John

[Norm Dulak]

Norm
Nice wit hthe two in . Ifind the BG a little monotonous aand bright but no big deal. Grand shot of a great plant. Very hard species to grow by the way !
John

Thanks, John, for your comments. I'm glad that you like the plant.

As for the background, the problem with Longwood is that while the flowers are beautiful, the backgrounds are invariably complex and distracting. There may be other flowers, plant supports or identification tags, or walls or windows with frames that I don't find attractive. To avoid that background complexity, I sometimes resort to backgrounds that I carry with me. Solid colored panels IMO haven't worked well, and I now prefer my meadow background.

Of course it could easily be darkened somewhat here, but I prefer the way I have it here for these particular orchids. I reckon that is a matter of personal taste. But I am sorry that you find this background monotonous. If you have a better idea, please let me know.

Norm

[John Robinson]

Hi Norm
I do use one colourback sheets but most people find them un natural I laugh a little at that as any back ground we might put in is unatural surely.
I photograph various scenes such as meadows or grassland etc, manually and out of focus, the get them printed A3 size.
Cheers
John

[Steve Maxson]

A beautiful portrait of these orchids with very nice DOF, lighting, and comp. The background works for me. You might consider selectively darkening the background a little to see how that would look, but, as you say, it's largely a matter of personal taste. :S3:

[Ron Conlon]

I also find the brightness of the background competes a little--it is a hard balance to find.

[Diane Miller]

This is a gorgeous image, but there is a yellow color cast, which is noticeable in the leaves and is causing the BG to be very saturated. I did a Curves and went to the auto options and chose Enhance Per Channel Contrast and checked Snap Neutral Midtones. That made some siginficant moves to the endpoints of the color channels. I also lightened the image a little by pulling up the RGB channel of the curve.

Then I did a Hue-Sat adjustment layer and brought the yellows down a little more and masked out the center of the orchids (don't know if they should have some yellow there, though). Then I went to the red channel and warmed it just slightly by moving the Hue slider a little to the right.

This brought out the detail in the BG. The leaves still look a little yellow, though. This is just a quick touchup -- could be done better with more refinement on the raw file and the master PS file.

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks everyone for your comments and suggestions! Diane's repost is interesting and appreciated, but the brighter background areas in it seem to have harsh edges.

[Diane Miller]

That could be fixed -- just went with what came out of the tonal corrections. Working on a JPEG has limits.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Hi Norm,
Although I'm not familiar with this exact species of Lady Slipper... assuming it's a NA Native? The portrait is lovely and shows off the throat details very well, as well as the curves (well, all parts of the flower!) I wouldn't change anything about your OP... in the future, since these are woodland flowers, might be fun to experiment with a bit darker blurred "woodsie" BG?

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks, Sandy. Longwood didn't identify the species, so I can't say much about it. But I'll try to experiment with a somewhat darker BG in the future.

[Anita Bower]

Beautiful capture. Excellent job with your little camera. I love the color of the flowers and how they stand out. Sandy has a good suggestion. I'm thinking that the out of focus green meadow photo used as a bg was of uneven brightness. Perhaps something a little more even in the future?

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks Anita. The background brightness is uneven because the meadow has green patches and brighter areas. I think that's more interesting, but that's just my preference.