Wisteria

[Julie Kenward]

The wisteria was just starting to bloom at Powell Gardens the other day. If you've never smelled wisteria you are missing one of the most fragrant smells in all the plant world. It's like lilacs x 10! :D

This particular plant was hanging from the post of a purgola in deep shade so I had to open up the BG quite a bit in pp. I also did the paint technique on the lower edges of the frame to smooth out some grass that was down below this blossom and I darkened the URC to keep it from being overly distracting. I also cloned out a couple of small leaves that were half in/half out of the frame along the edges.

Canon 40D, EF 100mm f/2.8 macro
f3.2 @ 1/640th, ISO 400 (I probably should have bumped the aperture a bit more but there were a lot of distractions near the plant.)
Processed in ACR & CS4, slight crop.

[Bob Miller]

Hi Julie...nice diagonal composition and beautiful color and tone in the flowers. Your bg looks great...I see no evidence of pp. I like it alot!

[OvidiuCavasdan]

Beautiful colors and good work on bg! Don't know if possible, but did you try to bend/position the central leaf pointing downwards?...just a thought...

[Ken Childs]

Overall this is a beautiful image! I do wish the top bloom hadn't been cut off. Even though you darkened it, I still find the URC somewhat distracting. Did you try cloning away or severely blurring everything in the URC?

[Julie Kenward]

Ken, now that I look at it, I probably should try to blur or remove that stuff. I think I might also have the top of the bloom that got cut off - it probably got cut when I was trimming back the URC. I'll take another look.

Ovidiu, I don't remember if I have another image where I moved the leaves down or not...I'll take a look at that. I thought the one leaf being turned was rather interesting to the image.