Yellow Gazania

[Andre van As]

I recorded this image with a Hasselblad 50MP sensor - 120mm Macro II lens - SS 1/30, f4.0, ISO 50 - Rosco Liteloop Ring. Tripod. Focus plane at about 25 cm. Shot tethered to a MacbookPro and controlled the shooting and incremental focusing with Hasselblad Phocus. Shot a stack of 53 frames which was initially processed as RAW images in Phocus and exported as TIFF files to be processed by Zerene Stacker.
.

Post processed with my usual workflow

Comments welcome

Thanks

Andre

[Jonathan Ashton]

Yellow on black works well, I like the colours and detail.
(I find your moniker a little intrusive, i.e. large, taking my eye off the image).

[Andre van As]

"Intrusive Moniker" easily down sized. Thanks for comment.

How do you protect your work?

[Jonathan Ashton]

"Intrusive Moniker" easily down sized. Thanks for comment.

How do you protect your work?

I protect it inconsistently, sometimes I place a copyright sign sometimes not. I have been accused of vanity for using a copyright sign! The fact is if someone really wants to plagiarise any of my images they probably can. If they do well they do I must confess it doesn't really bother me because I make or take images/photos for pleasure rather than for financial gain. In a perverse sort of way it is a compliment if someone wants to steal one of my images, however I think it is a pretty sad state of affairs if someone really wanted to do this but hey, I still had the pleasure of recoding and making the image in the first instance. If someone stole any of my images they would only be fooling themselves, I don't really see how they would derive pleasure or satisfaction from doing such a thing.

[Mitch Haimov]

Nicely done--stacking worked well here. Black BG works well with this subject, especially since the mostly yellow subject does include small black areas. Interesting subject; I am not familiar with gazania.

I don't worry about theft of my images here--the resolution is such that they aren't usable for much beyond web presentation. And in the case of this image, it would take anyone with rudimentary retouching skills ten seconds to remove your initials, so there does not seem to be much benefit to justify adding the distracting element to your work. That said, we all must present our work in a way that makes us comfortable.

[Andre van As]

Gazanias grow readily in most temperate/subtropical parts of the world. This one came from plants I am growing in our courtyard garden in Florida , US. Seems to me that many BPN members put their moniker and a c(opyright) on their pictures - I realize most of this is only branding and not protection! Ownership is better imprinted in the metadata of the accompanying file which offers a better way to defend against picture theft. The amount of effort you are prepared to put into defending your property depends on how much the images are worth in potential revenue. Something which becomes apparent in retrospect only. I was just testing the waters with you guys.

[David Kenny]

Wow! The detail is amazing in this shot. The original file must be huge.

[Andre van As]

Hi David thanks for the comment.
The original file that this jpg was derived from is 245MB. A one flower project of ~50 images which includes saving the original fff raw files, the derived TIFF versions, the stacked outputs and the edited and sized files for printing amounts to about 14GB. I had to rapidly acquire an additional 4TB of external drive as my internal HD (500GB) got choked up and the computer slowed down.

Regards

Andre

[Cheryl Slechta]

Andre, the detail and colors are gorgeous. I love gazanias and this one I'm sure will brighten up everyone's winter.

[Andre van As]

Hi Carol
Thanks - I appreciate your comment and input.

Regards

Andre

[Andre van As]

Apologies - Cheryl - not Carol

Andre

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Andre, most of the good points of this image have already been mentioned. Point to add is your excellent control of the exposure on the yellows. They are a notoriously difficult color to control in my experience. Very well done!

[Andre van As]

Hi Jerry
Thanks for your comment and encouragement. I love the flora on your web site. It has given me some ideas of other subjects to explore. I think many interesting species are ignored because at first glance they do not seem to be spectacular.
BTW - what is the bug in your logo?
Regards

Andre

[Steve Maxson]

Hi Andre and welcome to the Macro forum! This is a beautiful image with well exposed yellows set against the black background - the stacking also worked very well. Regarding watermarks and copyright symbols, people have different, personal, views on whether or not to use them on their photos. I always include them on mine - knowing full well that someone with minimal processing skills could easily remove them. I hope to see more of your work here in Macro!

[Andre van As]

Thanks Steve
I am working on several other images and will be posting them in the near future.
Thanks for the encouraging comment
Regards

Andre

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks for the compliments Andre! I totally agree with you about common species often being ignored. That's why I like macro, because getting in close often reveals that hidden beauty that is missed when just considering species at a glance. Many of the species you find on my website (especially the bugs) are actually quite common, because I shoot mostly around my house or workplace, or a place I happen to be in.
Regarding the bug in my logo: it is actually a fantasy species! I took a photo of a nice looking pinned up tropical bug (actually without taking notice of what species it was), painted it over with black and removed a few parts to make it a simple silhoute. Then I cut it in half and mirrored one side to get a perfectly symmetrical logo.