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View Full Version : Thank Goodness for Shamrocks



Julie Kenward
02-22-2009, 11:17 AM
One of the few houseplants that bloom year round! This one gave me a few decent images but wow are they a difficult plant to photograph. All the stems are translucent and the leaves a dark green so you can easily under/over expose the different pieces. There are also a hundred different things going in a hundred different directions so DOF is also a mess. Still, I keep going back for more punishment!
Canon 40D, 100mm f/2.8 Macro
f4.5 @ 1/200th, ISO 200
Manual mode, Daylight WB, fill flash
Processed in ACR & CS4

Most of the BG was dark but there were some blurry green areas - I used a quick mask on multiply mode to get rid of them.

Joseph Martines
02-22-2009, 11:37 AM
Jules:

Since you were using a fill flash, would a smaller aperture brought more in focus??

I realize that you are shooting through several"planes."

Am just trying to figure out what I would do presented with the same image opportunity.

Julie Kenward
02-22-2009, 12:11 PM
Yes, it would have...certainly. At the time I was trying to get a softness to the BG to where I could leave it in the image - I wasn't planning on taking the BG all the way to black. I've tried photographing this plant with shallow DOF, moderate and totally stopped down and all three leave you wondering if you should have tried something different!

Although the front petal and the bottom leaves and stems are quite OOF I'm still fairly happy with this image because the focal point is where I wanted it - on the stamen and new bud. There's certainly an argument to be made for stopping the aperture down and deleting all but the center flower from the image but I liked the abstract way the leaves to the side made the image feel so I chose to leave them in. If I did it again I would probably stop down more and try to get the entire flower in focus but, as I said, I really was looking to keep the BG in when I made the photograph.

Joseph Martines
02-22-2009, 02:40 PM
Thank you for your prompt explanation. It helps me to understand what you were thinking.

Do you have any objections to using a "provided background?" ........ such as black velvet.

Jackie Schuknecht
02-22-2009, 03:10 PM
I think you did very well Julie. Like how the focus is on the two stamens and the one petal on the flower. Love the framing too.

Julie Kenward
02-22-2009, 04:04 PM
Joseph, I don't have any objection to it at all but you would need to see a shamrock plant to understand why that would only work if you picked the flowers off the plant and set them near the black velvet. I have an medium sized clay pot (maybe 6" across) and I bet there are 100 stems in that one pot. That's another reason why it is such a challenging plant to photograph. I suppose you could fit a small square of black posterboard down between the stems and isolate one or two but where's the fun in that? I love/hate photographing this plant because it is such a challenge - especially with the sun streaming in from the outside window - the lighting is spotty, the plants range from deep and intense to translucent...it really makes you think about how to get the best image in camera and then how to fix the darn thing in pp!

Joseph Martines
02-22-2009, 08:20 PM
I run into a similar problem when I visit various botanical gardens where there are a zillion plants all on top of one another. Trying to isolate one flower becomes a real challenge. At least I know now that I'm not the only one faced with such challenges.

I'm still trying to learn how to master my camera before I move on to the challenges of PS. Wow, is that not one of the most complex applications that you ever used???

I have no plants in my house. Since I travel a fair bit it wouldn't work because they would die from thirst!!