Pink Lady Slipper

[Ed Vatza]

I was going through some images from this past June's trip to Acadia National park and decided to play around a bit more with one of the Lady Slipper images. I ended up taking it into Topaz Adjust for some final processing but this time I was looking for an enhanced macro/flora image and not something OOB. This is what I came up with.

Image made using Canon 30D; Sigma 150mm macro lens; tripod-mounted.

1/50 sec @ f/5.0; ISO 800; -1/3 EV

[Bruce Murden]

Ed, I like the focal plane, the bokeh, and the play of colors between FG and BG here. At first, I thought that you could take this composition square due to the symmetry, but the more I look at it, the more I think your offset subject on a rectangle works best, with the RH sepal angled downward more than the LH one. Your off-center placement of the bloom leaves good visual space for the RH sepal. Nice relatively straight image here!

[Don Lacy]

Ed, the pink contrast nicely with the green BG giving the flower a nice three dimensional feel and I also like the placement in the frame.

[Julie Kenward]

I also like the placement but could stand just a sliver more on top and bottom. Nicely exposed - but I do wish that one piece on the top was a little more in focus.

[Anita Bower]

I love these flowers, and it is so exciting to find them along the trail. Nice composition. The pink against the green pops nicely. I would like to see a bit more of the flower in focus, but that may have been impossible while also blurring the BG. The image, especially the green, is a bit too saturated for my taste, but I know this is the effect you were going for.

[Ed Vatza]

Thanks folks. I appreciate the comments/feedback/critiques. Very helpful and you addressed some of the concerns that I felt with this image.

I also like the placement but could stand just a sliver more on top and bottom.

I knew this comment would come from someone. I made it recently in a critique of one of Roman's (I believe it was) posts and knew it was going to come back to me here. Actually there was room at both top and bottom but the flower came in on a less than pleasant angle. So I rotated the canvas a few degrees and the resulting crop trimmed both top and bottom. I guess I could add a bit of canvas if I knew what I was doing. :)

I love these flowers, and it is so exciting to find them along the trail... I would like to see a bit more of the flower in focus, but that may have been impossible while also blurring the BG. The image, especially the green, is a bit too saturated for my taste, but I know this is the effect you were going for.

Interesting story (at least to me!). ;) I found two of these Lady Slippers along the Witch Hole Pond carriage road in Acadia while on a bird walk during the Acadia Birding Festival back in June. I marked the spot in my mind and came back the next day to photograph the flowers. I was able to relocate both and photograph both.

I think I made images up to f/11 or possibly even f/16 but you are right, the background went south much beyond what you see here so the "best" images to my eye are the ones between f/4 and f/5.6.

Finally, the saturation issue is interesting since the other Lady Slipper I photographed was a much paler pink. But this one was this deeper pink color in its natural state. I don't know why. Younger? Different acidity in the soil? Not sure. In both cases the backgrounds were very bright green ferns. So I did nothing to enhance saturation but I also did nothing to back it off.