Mutant Daffodil

[Ed Vatza]

Not my name! I found this daffodil growing wild down along my local creek on Sunday morning. It looked intriguing so I made a few images of it. Lucky I did because when I returned with my wife on Sunday evening, it was gone. Obviously someone felt it was better to keep all for themselves than to allow others to share.

When I got home, we dug through daffodil websites trying to come up with an id. The closest thing we found was just identified as "Mutant Daffodil".

Canon 30D; Sigma 150mm Macro lens, Canon 430 EX Flash w/ LumiQuest Softbox mounted on a flexible bracket; handheld

1/100 sec @ f/8; ISO 400; 0 EV; FEC -1

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Certainly a beautiful looking flower Ed. Am not sure about the exposure since I feel that the tips of petals are quite bright & there are far too many such petal tips in the image to hinder the visual harmony.
Just my thoughts... :)

[Ed Vatza]

Certainly a beautiful looking flower Ed. Am not sure about the exposure since I feel that the tips of petals are quite bright & there are far too many such petal tips in the image to hinder the visual harmony.
Just my thoughts... :)

I alway look forward to and appreciate your comments, Kaushik. But this one has me confused. I assume you are talking about the the petals in the center of the flower. I'm not sure what you mean by "the tips of petals are quite bright & there are far too many such petal tips in the image to hinder the visual harmony". I did back off on (desaturate) the yellows in processing and they look fine on my monitor. Is your comment a reference to something else that I am missing? Were you looking for greater dof? I'd appreciate a bit more explanation if you don't mind.

[denise ippolito]

Ed, We have been getting hybrid Hibiscus, petunias, impatiens that are referred to as double blooms-they are a bloom inside a bloom I imagine this happens in nature from time to time as a kind of mutant flower. That's probably where the idea came from for these hybrids. Just my guess anyway!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

I alway look forward to and appreciate your comments, Kaushik. But this one has me confused. I assume you are talking about the the petals in the center of the flower. I'm not sure what you mean by "the tips of petals are quite bright & there are far too many such petal tips in the image to hinder the visual harmony". I did back off on (desaturate) the yellows in processing and they look fine on my monitor. Is your comment a reference to something else that I am missing? Were you looking for greater dof? I'd appreciate a bit more explanation if you don't mind.

Hi Ed,
I guess I did not choose my words correctly. I apologise :)
I am attaching an image below with some markings.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/3425382926_f95d4e0c71_o.jpg

I was mentioning about the red circles (or the flower tips). I shall not say that they are blown. But perhaps to keep them under control u have selectively brought down the brightness + de-saturated them (as u've mentioned) & hence these areas look off-coloured - in other words they do not blend well with the rest of the petals' yellow (a bit of abrupt transition). Thus they stand out pretty plain & different (sort of whitish tips). The same pattern tends to get repeated with the blue arrows in the outer ring. I perhaps should not have used the words 'quite bright' which does convey a wrong meaning (sorry about that :o ).
Now to the other part : if the natural existance of the flower itself is such that the tips are white (and not yellow), then I wish to apologise & take back my comments since I made a wrong (??) assumption that the flower is uniformly yellow.
:)

Ed, I'm really glad that you sought clarification. That helps me stand corrected too.

[Ed Vatza]

Thanks for taking the time to explain. Now I understand what you are referring to. I went back to the original image straight out of the camera. That is what is posted above (resized but nothing else done). As you can see, the white tips are there in the original image.

I also checked an image from a totally different perspective and again the tips are white. I'll post that below. That said, I don't know if they are supposed to be but they are. :)

[Julie Kenward]

I was thinking exactly what Kaushik was thinking...all those little dots of white kept my eyes from focusing down on the plant as a whole...they just kept darting from one white spot to another.

Now...that said...I know those probably aren't "blown whites" but actual white tips on the plant petals because some of my "mutant daffodils" have them as well. I'd maybe consider leaving one or two and cloning over the rest so the eyes can land and "rest" a bit longer on the flower overall.

[Ed Vatza]

And a totally different perspective.

Whoops! I see Jules slipped in between the two image posts and is saying basically what the images show.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Yup Ed, I get the point. The very nature of the flower exhibits the whitish ends. This is pretty apparent in ur second image too (from a different perspective).
:)