Some flowers

[Desmond Chan]

D700 + 100f2 lens on tripod. Manual exposure mode. ISO 200 f22 3s. All natural light from windows.

I find giving a photo a title is more difficult than actually taking the photograph. :o

C&C welcome and appreciated !

Regardless, thank you for looking !!

[Cheryl Flory]

gorgeous lighting! love the blossoms. how did you narrow the light to the blossoms only?

the curly stem keeps drawing my eye from the blossoms, since I am unfamiliar with this plant, I keep trying to figure out why the stem curls. still I hope someday to be able to take such a photo! wow.

[denise ippolito]

Desmond, I really like the way you've presented this. The use of natural light and the unique composition are lovely. I might evict the couple of pieces showing up from the BG at the bottom and the right(minor clean-up)But the curved stem and the way the flower pops from the BG is special.

[Anita Bower]

Beautiful! Love the composition, the light,the focus on the flowers (Begonia?), with the bit of green. Like Cheryl, I want to know how you got the dark BG surrounding the beautifully lit flower. I agree about titles, they are difficult for me, so I usually just give the name of the flower. :)

[Stuart Frohm]

Thanks very much for posting this superb photo.
I'd welcome any additional information you're willing to give about its lighting, etc.

[Desmond Chan]

Thank you for the comments, everyone !

I also don't know the name of the flowers either :o They are part of a small pot of flowers sitting in my place. The stems are mostly curly, some more so than the other. The light was from the right (from the viewer's perspective) and I used an incident light meter to take the exposure readings. It's an old Minolta IV light meter and what I've found is that, when the primary light source is more or less from the side, if I point the meter towards the light source, it usually gives me the right exposure of the main subject with a kind of dark background. That's good because that was what more or less looks like to the eyes (the eyes of course can see the details in shadows better than the sensor can). After that, I darkened the background further (but not making it totally dark) in post-processing to get to the image that I had in mind. And also lightened up the shadow in the leave.

Attached is one that have more Nik post-processing done. I have a second thought about the original cropping and I'm now thinking I didn't need to to crop that much :)

[denise ippolito]

Desmond I do like the second crop also but the first image has more color and sharpness to my eye?

[Desmond Chan]

but the first image has more color and sharpness to my eye?

True, Denise. I applied the Monday Morning filter in Nik's and it's supposed to be softer and the colors de-saturated. As you can see, the flowers are also brighter :) I found this image also looks good in b&w. But, I think I'm biased :D

[Anita Bower]

Thank you for the comments, everyone !

I also don't know the name of the flowers either :o They are part of a small pot of flowers sitting in my place.

I think it is a Begonia. :)

[Desmond Chan]

I think it is a Begonia. :)

Could be. I just surfed the net and they say there're thousands of varieties of Begonia :) Mine has a lot of flowers at one point and the biggest ones are about one inch in diameter. Anita, I trust though that you know more about flowers than I do :o

[Ken Childs]

While both are nice, I definitely prefer the crop and colors of the OP. :)

[Anita Bower]

Could be. I just surfed the net and they say there're thousands of varieties of Begonia :) Mine has a lot of flowers at one point and the biggest ones are about one inch in diameter. Anita, I trust though that you know more about flowers than I do :o

See here for one of my photos of Begonias http://anitabower.aminus3.com/image/2008-08-18.html

[Julie Kenward]

I agree that the top crop is better - and I like that pop of color that it has as well. The repost somehow has less depth to it and more "extra" negative space at the top.

I immediately thought this was a begonia - I've had a few over the years and the stem and flowers seem to match my experience with the plant. It's lovely and you did a bang up job on the exposure. Thanks so much for telling us how you did it!