Theme: Oriental Lily
I spent the morning photographing at Longwood Gardens in the conservatory. These Oriental Lilies gave off a sweet perfume. I experimented with a 180mm macro lens.
I didn't do much to this photo: Viveza 2, Saturate and Desaturate selected areas, High pass for edge of front petal, and DeNoise.
I'm not sure what I think about the composition.
Anita, this is very pretty. The colours seem too red so I adjusted them using Filter> Blur>Average and then used soft light as a blending mode. I like the shape of the petals echoing each other, and the curve of the sharpened petal echoing the stamens. I am having problems with the green line near the top of the frame grabbing my attention.
I like the color of the lily and what you did with the depth of field. Because you said you weren't sure about the composition, I played around with it. The yellow stamens seem well-placed horizontally, so I rejected cropping from the right or left. The curved top of the petal -- because it's in focus -- plays a major role in the image, so I wanted to be sure it was placed to its greatest advantage. I use divine proportions instead of the rule of thirds, so I worked with it, and it showed the top to be above the relevant divine proportions line. I rejected the idea of just a simple crop from the bottom because I didn't want to lose the rest of the petal. I did crop it to put the curved top on the divine proportions line. Then, I compressed the bottom part of the image in Free Transform using the Warp mode, bringing the original bottom up to where the new bottom was after the crop.
While I was at it, I made the dark green background softer and bluer to go with the pinks and yellows.
Anita, I like the focus and the depth of field. I think I prefer the background as presented in Dennis' repost.
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Anita, I love the curve and the luscious color of the lily! For me the oranges and yellows of the stamens are distracting. Something softer like Dennis' image is a possibility. And I like the curve and pinks so much that I would play around with cropping the stamens entirely away for another type of image.
Lucky you to be able to take advantage of the beautiful flowers of Longwood Gardens!
Beautiful idea but I long to see more top and bottom. Did you shoot any zoomed out a little?
Dennis' change of the color of the BG has left halos. Tricky proposition, even if it was an indirect selection such as a Hue-Sat layer. It reveals things that are in the original raw file that we don't see until we do extreme tonal changes. Maybe a better result can be had on the raw file. But it was a good idea!
like the third repost better
Thank you all for your input!
Here is a modified version. I added a few textures by Kim Klassen and French Kiss. I also squashed it a bit, taking a bit off the center above the curves of the front petals, using Recompose. I cropped a bit off the right side to make the pistils off center.
I like this repost, Anita, with the bkgd less prominent.
Thanks, Nancy
Anita, I like your spirit of experimentation with this image and I can see merits to all the reposts. I think I'm most partial to your final edit though. I love the fact that we get so many different ideas to work with here; it's one of the things I love about BPN! The relatively small area of the petal that is in sharp focus really makes this image interesting to me.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
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Thanks, Kerry. I completely agree with the fun of seeing how others work an image.Originally Posted by Kerry Perkins
Anita, I like what is happening in the lower half of the image. I find the stamens a bit distracting. The third post is the winner.
I agree about the distraction. It is an experimental photo. Thanks for your input.
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