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View Full Version : Rhododendron with light painting



Randy Stout
06-12-2009, 06:43 PM
It was a lovely afternoon here, my wife was gardening, so I wandered around looking for some suitable macro subjects. This blossom was in fairly dense shade. A took a few, natural light, flash, various parameters, but wasn't really happy. So, tried light painting. I used a LED penlight to light the front blossom during the exposure. I moved it around to smooth out the effect. I tried to keep it pretty subtle, but may try it tonight in the dark to see what I can do.

Nikon D700 Sigma 180 f/32 .5 second ISO 200 Gitzo Wimb V2 !

Post NX2 crop, sharpen, some levels and curves on background

Comments always appreciated. I felt kind of silly crawling around in the yard, but had a great time!

Randy

Mike Moats
06-12-2009, 08:09 PM
Hey Randy, good looking subject, like the depth of field, nice light.

Julie Kenward
06-12-2009, 08:39 PM
Great idea Randy! I love the way you have the intense greens at the bottom and then the bright flower with the darkest area at the top. My eye really stays on the flower and occasionally drops down to the gorgeous greens and back to the flower again.

One small suggestion would be to clone out the small white area just to the right of the flower (tucked in nest to two of the yellow petals.) That's really the ony distracting thing I can find - everything else really works here!

Super lighting on this. I can't wait to see what Roman thinks of it because he loves this kind of special effect.

Gordon Craig
06-13-2009, 07:22 AM
Nice idea with the penlight. I would like to see if you got anything interesting during the evening.

Anita Bower
06-13-2009, 02:13 PM
Everything seems to radiate out from the open blossom. I like the dark BG and the compositon. Personally, I'd like to see the open blossom just a bit less light, if that makes any sense. Great idea to paint with light during the day.

Dave Mills
06-14-2009, 08:22 PM
Hi Randy, I'm impressed with the comp on this. A very different way of shooting a rhodo. I like your idea about using a penlight to lite the image but I put this in PS and lightened the subject and it added greatly to its impact.

Randy Stout
06-14-2009, 08:55 PM
Dave:
I would be curious to see your version in a repost. I am having computer issues and lost all my editing software, so can't do anything on my own!

Anita mentioned she thought the open flower was already too bright, so let me see what you found!

I have somemore from that night of the same rhodie, but can't post them until I get my problems sorted.

Thanks

Randy