Gerbera Daisy Bouquet

[Julie Kenward]

I bought these beautiful candy corn colored gerbera daisies at the grocery store a week ago when they were on sale. I've posted a few of the images down in the macro forum but thought I'd shake up all these bird images with one here in ETL.

I tried many different backgrounds and arrangements but this is one of my favorites. I used a large piece of black foam core board for the BG. I photographed the flowers outside on my deck with the lighting coming from the side. I used fill flash to balance out the light/dark areas of the flowers. In post-processing, I took the dark BG to black with a levels adjustment and then corrected each flower so they looked evenly lit and added a bit of pop in contrast with a curves adjustment.

Canon 40D, EF 100mm f/2.8 macro
f10 @ 1/25th, ISO 400
Manual mode, pattern metering, Daylight WB
Handheld, mid-morning light
Processed in ACR & CS4.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Jules - SIMPLE and Effective!!
Only thing I would do would be to darken the light area in the Upper LHC.
Love it!!!

[John Chardine]

Could I have a postcard of this Jules. Absolutely classic, simple composition with great design elements of the package. I have found it difficult to not blow colours like this when converting and presenting on the web. The colours are perfect.

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks gentlemen. Lance I had to look three times to see the lighter area you were talking about! I'm desperately in need of new specs I guess! Good eye! John, it's taken me FOREVER to get good with these colors - darn yellows, reds and oranges drive me to distraction sometimes. I did a bit of work on them in ACR with the RAW file and then reworked them in PS until I got them right where I wanted them. I'm sure they are a bit "blown" technically but who can argue with the color? Makes me want to lean in and take a lick off them!

[Bob Miller]

Beautiful!