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Bruce Murden
06-03-2009, 11:37 PM
It has been a great year for new finds in my neck of the woods - literally! In addition to swamp cabbage, marsh marigold, and red trillium I found in my neighborhood this year and hadn't noticed or gone deep enough to find, here are some of my latest surprise find. In the narrow band of woods dividing my yard from my neighbor's yard, I found several yellow Lady's Slipper, Cypripedium calceolus var. pubescens, also known as Cypripedium parviflorum.


Nikon D80, Nikkor 105mm micro, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/125s, (ROMAN, ARE YOU READY FOR THIS?), Nikon SB-800 flash at 1/16 power for fill flash through white diffuser, partly overcast afternoon.

I know I can still get better DOF on the flower, and I'll keep working on that, but I may be too late for these blooms soon.

Note: "my neck of the woods" is an American colloquialism for "my local area", in case it isn't used this way outside of the US

Randy Stout
06-04-2009, 07:11 AM
Bruce:

Lovely, soft colors, nice flash work, looks natural. I might tone down the brightest area of yellows on the left.

I wish the dangling petal wasn't cut off, perhaps a vertical as an option might have worked.
I like the selective focus, but as a minor point the small area that is in focus on the upper petal tends to draw my eye a bit away from the center.

It is good to keep your eyes open as you mentioned, all sorts of finds out there!

Thanks for sharing.

Randy

Anita Bower
06-04-2009, 12:53 PM
What a wonderful experience to find these gorgeous flowers in your neck of the woods!

Beautiful BG and colors. I like being able to see the little "hairs" on the upper leaves. I agree with Randy.

Roman Kurywczak
06-04-2009, 07:24 PM
Hey Bruce,
I almost Pee'd myself laughing when I saw you used the flash! Great job with it and handled very well. OK....clip of petal mentioned.....so just #'s now.....I would push the D80 to 400 ISO and with flash....if not too windy.....1/60th handheld......so that gets you to f11 at least. Considering the BG.....you would have probably been fine at f8 or so. Megs are free....play around! Welcome to the 21st century with flash!!!

Julie Kenward
06-04-2009, 07:58 PM
Bruce you're so lucky to have these plants in your neck of the woods. I played around with your original a bit...I hope you don't mind. I didn't do it so much to point out anything obviously wrong as I did to show what making some very small, subtle changes can do to an image.

I pulled back the yellows just a bit with the hue / saturation slider.
I cloned over the bright spots of the yellow slipper by using the clone stamp at 30% and darken.
I cloned out one or two small spots that I found distracting on the top leaf.
I also cloned out the end of the leaf that went out of the frame at the bottom and cloned in a "point" so it ended within the frame.
I added a little gaussian blur to the BG. I also lightened it a bit with a screen layer and cut off the top of the frame not because of the composition but because all the darkest areas were there and they kept pulling my eye up.
I ran a round of noise reduction and added some sharpening to the plant itself.

They are all very subtle changes and it certainly is more "natural" in your version. As a moderator, I sometimes like to show others what is possible with an image IF they choose to use post-production tools to alter their photographs. I always encourage a light hand and a slight touch because you can quickly go from an image looking natural to one that looks like a $.99 super glossy poster.

Not everyone will agree with my changes and, again, I didn't do them because the image was bad in any way - I did them to show others how small changes can affect an image. I hope those who are here to learn can see the changes between the two images and you can decide for yourself if you want to make those same changes to an image of yours in the future. It's all personal choice and it's neither right nor wrong - so do what's right for each of you. It is, after all, your art.

Bruce, thanks for allowing me to use your image in this way.

Bruce Murden
06-05-2009, 07:10 AM
Thanks all! Roman - you gave me the response I was looking for, and had a good laugh myself this morning.

Jules, you're always welcome to show a different view of an image. One of the nice things about BPN is that you get ideas for improving images, whether the ideas are what you want on one or not, they'll help you somewhere. I like the improvement to the BG, and the work you did to include the tip of the lower leaf was excellent. Thanks!

Anita Bower
06-05-2009, 07:37 AM
Jules: Your tips are helpful. I used some of your ideas to bring leaves in from the edge of the frame in my Chamomile image.