Thanksgiving Thistle II

[Julie Kenward]

Here's another thistle image from Thanksgiving morning. The light outside that morning at the lake was so soft and gorgeous I can't help but wish for light like that every day.

Canon 40D, 70-200mm f4L
f4 @ 1/1250th, ISO 320
Pattern metering, Manual mode
Handheld, no flash, natural early morning light
Processed in ACR & CS4 with slight crop, levels and curves adjustment, NR.

Hopefully this will look okay as I just recalibrated my monitor and I'm not sure I got the result I wanted so let me know if it looks too light/dark. Thanks!

[Mike Moats]

Hey Jules, nice how the hairs float in the wind. Good details and BG.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Julie, the calibration is absolutely fine IMO. The exposure & colours rendered look just perfect to me.

[Julie Kenward]

Thank you, Kaushik. I still think I need a slight contrast tweak but it's good to know it looks okay online.

[denise ippolito]

Julie, very nice-colors are great .I like the star formed by the hairs.

[Anita Bower]

Lovely background, composition and details. I like the focus on the front part of the pod, with the stem and front fluff in focus.

Do I notice that the image is aggressively sharpened?

Anita

[Dave Mills]

Your calibration looks fine to me. Beautiful backround and "sweet" light on the subject!!

[Don Lacy]

Very nice image Julie the light and BG are beautiful.

[Julie Kenward]

Anita, my 100mm macro lens tends to be very sharp in the first place so many times if I hit the 'sweet spot' just right it actually looks this sharp straight out of camera (SOOC). I do believe I added just a touch more sharpening to make sure the front hairs were distinct and separate in the image.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Julie, I like this thanksgiving thistle much better than the other one! I like that it has more DOF and the two seeds really add something to look at. I also like how you positioned the stem at the bottom of the fram, slightly from the left. I would consider a somewhat tighter crop from bottom, top and right of the frame. I like the sharp look, it doesn't look artificial to me.
As with the other thistle, light and BG are great!
- Jerry -