Here's an image I shot today of a spotted coralroot among the ferns out in the BWCAW near Ely. Coralroots are not rare, but the spotted is the least common of them all. My goal is to capture all the wild orchid species native to the Minnesota boreal forest (a surprisingly large number), so I was thrilled to add this one to the collection.
Now if I could just find a calypso orchid (fairy slipper), I'd think I'd died and gone to heaven.
This flower/petal cluster, by the way, is about half the diameter of a dime, and the flowers alternate up the long red shaft of the plant. A delicate and precious flower.
I fought a little bit to get the whites right on the screen. They always look different here once posted here than they do on my own screen in photoshop, so if the whites look a touch dingy, that's why.
Last edited by Steve Foss; 06-24-2008 at 03:30 PM.
What a delightful image! The DOF is perfect - the flower is all there and the stalk nicely fades away. The BG is clean. My one little nit pik might be to bump the whites on the flower just a bit or up the contrast a tad - unless, of course, the flower really is that creamy white shade.
Thanks, Julie. It really is that creamy white, and since there's one region to the left and lower left on the flower that's on the edge of being blown out on my monitor, I don't want to brighten that any more. But like I said, I'm always struggling a bit to get the whites to look online the way they do in Photoshop. Always more work to do, eh? :D
Hi Steve,
1/2 off the top green and a bit off the right would strenghten this compositionally for me........otherwise nice control of the lighting/BG/ and comp. Nicely seen of a very small, delicate flower.
Roman, I agree with you 100 percent on the crop in the normal course of things. I composed this for a magazine cover, and it will serve as a background image for an advertisement for my business, as well.
Last edited by Steve Foss; 06-24-2008 at 08:07 PM.