I tried to perfect my photo skills with a flower shot today. I wanted the colors to represent the flower as closely as I could. So far this is the best that I could do. I like the colors.
Gary, is the purple in this flower the same color as your house?
Lessons Learned:
- I used 3 different lenses, and ended up using my wider angle lens. I was suprised that this took the best photo.
- Any little shift will ruin the clarity of the shot. I took several photos, but many of them were effected by just a little wind. I even had to stand still while the shutter was open. This is because I was using a long exposure time, and a ISO of 100.
I switched the photo after a little more editing based upon suggestions from Kari. (See comments.)
5 comments:
Hi Steve - arent irises incredible? i have so many times tried to capture how intricate all the lines, colors and features they display. i'm fascinated by them. my landlord has these incredible cinnamon colored ones across the street.
nice photo for sure!
They are amazing. I tried for 3 days to capture the color. This is my best attempt so far, but I'm still not completely happy with it.
I think the downfall of this image is in the background. The somewhat muddy appearance makes the iris itself seem slightly muddy and out of focus, even though I know that it is not. I wonder what might happen if the background was edited (in Photoshop or similar) to a solid color.
Kari, I think you are right. Here is the results when I did that.
http://picasaweb.google.com/steve.gallow/Iris3
That was a very nice one. That you got the best result of such a large flower with a fairly normal focal length is due to the focal length combined with the f-stop of 16. This gives a large depth of field.
Personally I'm not to crazy about totally black, artificial backgrounds, but that is a personal taste. However, I freely admit that "my" iris could do with a further darkening of the background - that is where the noise is most visible. I may come back to that someday.
My "tip" is based on the book Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers by Martin Evening. He recommends that you use the Adobe plug-in for RAW-files (best used through the interface called Bridge). He further recommends that most noise reduction is done in this plug in the details panel and that both the Colour and Luminance settings can safely be set at 100 % in grainy pictures and that permanent sharpening is left to the proper PS. If this noise reduction is not enough, there is of course PS' own system.
He has quite a lot to say about noise reduction and sharpening. The book is quite a tomb, and I must admit that I use most for reference.
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