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First flower photo
Posted By: navcom, 07-29-2008, 03:21 PM

I have never been much for flower photography buy my wife was so proud of her first home-grown lillies I just had to photograph them.

Yes, there is some PS post-processing to achieve the soft effect, but what the heck!....I'm not a professional and I like it so there!

...I'll just call it art! Any comments would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
nav

K10D with Tamron 70-300mm lens. Back lit with off camera soft strobe.



Last edited by navcom; 07-29-2008 at 08:32 PM.
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07-29-2008, 04:53 PM   #2
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Pretty Nice PP too
07-29-2008, 05:35 PM   #3
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Nice! Interesting lens choice.
07-29-2008, 05:52 PM   #4
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QuoteOriginally posted by edskinner Quote
Nice! Interesting lens choice.
Thanks both of you! Yeah, the lens choice was simply made after trial and error with the lens choice I had at my disposal at the time. My 70-300mm won out!

Since this is my first flower shot, what lens is typical for flower shots?

07-29-2008, 05:53 PM   #5
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nice! I have been photographing my wife's lilies and they can be tricky. Does your wife like the shot? you may be doing more flowers!
07-29-2008, 06:23 PM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by timbo13 Quote
nice! I have been photographing my wife's lilies and they can be tricky. Does your wife like the shot? you may be doing more flowers!
She likes the shot. She's using it for her screensaver on her computer at work!
07-29-2008, 07:07 PM   #7
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It's a very nice work of art. I just read an article about digital PP and manipulation. To sum it up , unless you are shooting pics for AP or some other news wire - you should be able to express yourslef as a painter would

07-29-2008, 08:03 PM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by navcom Quote
Thanks both of you! Yeah, the lens choice was simply made after trial and error with the lens choice I had at my disposal at the time. My 70-300mm won out!

Since this is my first flower shot, what lens is typical for flower shots?
Whatever lens you don't have... You need to take lousy pictures of your wife's flowers with the lenses you've got (out of focus, mess 'em up in pp), then you can explain that with a DA*300 you could produce much better pictures of her masterpieces... done deal! I know my wife would see right through it but...

It's a nice image, well lighted and well isolated from any background.
07-29-2008, 08:29 PM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by heliphoto Quote
Whatever lens you don't have... You need to take lousy pictures of your wife's flowers with the lenses you've got (out of focus, mess 'em up in pp), then you can explain that with a DA*300 you could produce much better pictures of her masterpieces... done deal! I know my wife would see right through it but...

It's a nice image, well lighted and well isolated from any background.

Great idea! Too bad she wandered in and was looking over my shoulder as I read it!

Darn!
07-29-2008, 09:58 PM   #10
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Star gazer lillies right? My girlfriends favorite kind. Great shot.
07-30-2008, 04:30 AM   #11
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Beautiful shot, I like the processing you've done. It really adds to it.
07-30-2008, 04:48 AM   #12
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Nice ethereal glow this capture has.
Stunning work.
07-30-2008, 07:24 AM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by Redmanll34 Quote
Star gazer lillies right? My girlfriends favorite kind. Great shot.
Yep. Though I wouldn't know the difference. I know about as much about flowers as I know about the surface of the moon.
07-30-2008, 07:40 AM   #14
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I really like the effect you created with this image. Care to share how you achieved it?
07-30-2008, 08:15 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by LaRee Quote
I really like the effect you created with this image. Care to share how you achieved it?
Sure! I'm not a proprietary kind of guy.

For the photo, I used a black backdrop and two light sources. The first was just a soft spot located about 5 feet to the left and a foot behing the flowers for backlighting. When I say "spot", I mean one of those $2 aluminum shop lights from Home Depot with a soft white bulb in it. The second was a studio strobe/umbrella set to a relatively low output. It was located about 5 feet to the right and slightly in front and above the flowers to bring out the highlights.

For PP, I used Photoshop. I used an old trick taught to me by a photog friend to emulate a diffusion filter. First, select the entire image (ctrl-A), copy it to the clipboard (ctrl-C) and then create a new layer via copy. Then select the new layer, use Filter/blur and add a guasian blur to the new layer. Add enough blur to make the image almost unrecognizeable (alot). Then with the layer still selected, roll back the opacity slider to about 30% or so (to your taste).

That's it!
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