Yea...The flowers are starting to bloom!

[Patrick Sparkman]

I live in North Texas, and flowers seemed to have started to bloom overnight. I really love running around the fields near my house looking for flowers and bugs with the 65 MP-E.

This image is a combination of two images stacked using CS5 to get a little more depth of field. Probably around 2X magnification. The bright orange part looks this bright to the naked eye also, but it is really tiny.

Canon 5D II, 65 MP-E, MT-24, ISO 320, f16, 1/200, basic LR3 exposure corrections

All comments welcome.

[Chris Korman]

Patrick, this looks like it is some type of orchid? It is a nice capture. I am wondering if you have tried different positions for the flash, like side lighting, or top lighting, or both.

[Dave Leroy]

Good for you. It is a great time of year. My favorite.

It looks like a very tight shot with lots of detail.

If mine I might just lighten up the lower right petal to more closely match the left side to see how it looked.

Dave

[Brendan Dozier]

Real interesting looking flower shot and detail, Patrick. Agree about lightening lower rt petal.
Might be cool to focus in on just the fuzzy part at top too.

[Nick Palmieri]

Cool flower, agree with others comments. It appears that a pedal of this orchid is coming right out at the center of the frame. I f you are focus stacking I would focus on that pedal as well as it is a little distracting. Overall nice tight shot on a tough subject. TFS

[Norm Dulak]

Hi Patrick. I think this image is attractive and interesting, and I agree with the comments already made. I also think that it might be interesting to see the result of applying some clockwise rotation to the flower if possible. :S3:

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Patrick,
Great idea of focus stacking and great comments and observations above. I would like the fuzzy top hairs a bit lighter and sharper.....to seprate them from the BG a touch more. Overall, a few tweaks will take this up a notch and it would be interesting to see if you did rotate this a touch as well.

[Ken Childs]

Hi Patrick, Henbit is usually the first thing to bloom around here, too. They're been out for awhile but I haven't had the time to work with them but I'm hoping I'll get a chance today or tomorrow. I'm betting most looking at this shot don't realize just how small these flowers are! :S3:

I'm wishing that the BG was a bit more even and brighter, mainly so the hairs at the top looked more separated from the BG. Overall you did a good job with a tiny subject. You might want to consider bringing some indoors so you have more control over the shooting environment.

[Patrick Sparkman]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. It does look better rotated, and I did some level adjustments to make the "hair" stand out.

Thanks for the ID Ken! It is a little funny that it looks like an orchid, but this thing (about 1/4" long) is tiny and is a member of the mint family. From the side they look like giraffe heads. I will post a picture in the next couple of days showing that view.

[Anita Bower]

Isn't Spring wonderful?! Thanks for sharing your bit of it. Lovely colors! Thanks, Ken, for ID.