Posts in Category: bokeh
7/7/2009
And White Campion for my Banner!
This is another shot that is easy to visualize and difficult to do. I tried several times, with the Campion which was standing tallest and with the Vetch which was equally dramatic. This is what I was after.
Take a good long look at the image, because what I am about to tell you will change your perception of it, and I want your original impression well fixed.
Tell-tale shadow
Only when I got it all processed and uploaded to Wide Eyed In Wonder (my smugmug site) did I notice that there was a dark shadow across the lower petals. I had hopefully attributed it to the petals being folder under in processing, but now that I looked closely I saw it for what it was…the shadow of my lens.
Unacceptable. I can stand natural obstructions, and often leave them in when others might edit them out, but I do not want something that I put there to spoil the image.
I tried some Local Adjustment brush work in Lightroom, but the petals have a texture that was destroyed by adjustments in brightness or exposure. The only option to save the image (imho) was to take it into Photoshop Elements for some work with the clone tool. It is rare that I have to resort to anything beyond the tools available in Lightroom, but this was the exception. The clone tool allows you to pick up a piece of the image…color, texture…the whole thing…and paint it over another section of the image. It is the way you magically remove those protruding branches, bits of grass in front of faces, etc. In this case all I wanted to do was remove the shadow. To do that I selected the petal right above the shadow, and carefully painted its texture and exposure over the darkened areas. This works so well that on the left petal, I was able to paint in a water droplet at the tip of the petal.
Is this cheating? I don’t have a good answer for that. Certainly I would have preferred not to have gotten the shadow in there in the first place, but given the tools at our disposal today, I saw no reason to leave it there and let it spoil a shot that I really liked.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F5.6 @ 1/250th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
Besides the processing outlined above, in Lightroom I cropped slightly from the right to eliminate a distraction and improve composition. Recovery for the sky. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Landscape sharpen. I was able to retain all those edits when exporting the file to Photoshop Elements, so the find version includes those changes and the editing I did in PE.
6/29/2009
Black Admiral
The thing about butterflies is that they have two sides. The upper side is beautiful, and the underside can be two. The second thing about butterflies is you take what you can get. Some never sit with wings open, so open wing shots are almost certainly collected samples, and some only sit with wings open. The Black Admiral is one that does both, though closed wing is more common. When this one lit beside the trail, I was able to get one tel-macro shot of it open winged, and then it closed, and, though I waited, and though I worked the equally beautify closed wings, it never sat open winged again for me.
This shot is taken from about 2 cm. using the H50s macro setting on full wide. In this case the butterfly was perfectly posed, with background foliage far enough behind to be well out of focus (and some interesting bokeh). I like the way the light, slightly from the side, catches in the furry surface of the wing and brings out the detail.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro. F4.0 @ 1/160th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Cropped slightly from the right for composition in Lightroom. Some Recovery to bring down the brightness of the sunlit leaf. Added Clarity and Vibrance. Landscape sharpen preset.
From Around Home: Kennebunk.
And for those who wonder, here is the open wing shot, cropped slightly to make the subject larger in the field.
Black Admiral (open wings)
6/18/2009
Asctiou Garden's
Asctiou Gardens is an Azalea and Rhododendron garden, on the Japanese model, in Northeast Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Maine, near Acadia National Park. It was originally planted and landscaped by Charles Savage in the late 50s and has gone through several incarnations since. It is now managed and tended by the Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve and a staff of volunteers. It is beautiful in any season, but it is stunning when the Azaleas and Rhododendron are in bloom. I have been on MDI three times in season, and each time have come away amazed. The variety of colors, the massed blossoms, the vibrancy of it all against the water features and delicate green lines of the carefully tended trees and landscape…it all just short of too much.
These are all pretty straitforward shots with minimal processing in Lightroom. I used both the macro extremes of the Sony DSC H50. Close in and tel, for contrasting effects. Close in for deep detail, tel for compression. (See Lupine Lessons: Point of View on Point and Shoot Landscape for more on using your zoom and macro to good effect.)
In this array of shots, each thumbnail links back to the lightbox view at Wide Eyed In Wonder (my SmugMug site).
And one final vision, where the bokeh is as vital as the flowers themselves.
5/31/2009
Impression of Rhodora
Generally speaking I am, as a photographer, a realist. I attempt to catch what is there, in all its glory. Sometimes it is fun, however, to mess around with an image in software just to see where it goes. The result is not strictly speaking real, but sometimes you have to stretch the truth to make it true to the experience, at least in the telling, or the portrayal in this case.
The Rhodora was just coming into bloom at Saco Heath in what is becoming, my girls tell me, our traditional family outing on Memorial Day. Many plants were vibrant, but there is still more to come. Interesting, since last Memorial Day the Rhodora at Saco Heath was all gone by when we visited.
The base image here is, as usual, taken with the Sony DSC H50, in this case, at full tele, 465mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
I started out in Lightroom with my usual processing. Added Clarity and Vibrance, sharpen, black point to the right. This is what it looks like.
the original
I am totally happy with this image and it stands alone as a real picture of what the massed Rhodora blooms looked like that day…but it does not, maybe, fully catch the impact of the day.
In Lightroom I made a Virtual Copy of the image. This creates a new copy that I can re-edit, but does not duplicate the original file on the hard-drive. It simply creates a second set of instructions for processing the original when exported from Lightroom.
I opened the VC in the develop module. I have tried this before with other images so I knew what I was about to do. Clarity slider all the way to to left, adding what amounts to negative clarity, and softening the whole image. Negative clarity also produces interesting halo effects at strong color boundaries. I boosted the Vibrance even more, and added a small amount of saturation. And undid the sharpening. Hay presto. In seconds I had an impressionistic version of the Rhodora image.
Does it do a better job of conveying the effect of the massed Rhodora blooms? Maybe. I like it anyway. How about you?
From Saco Heath 09.
5/30/2009
Warm as Flesh: Lady Slipper and Mosquito
Tired of Lady Slippers yet? Evidently this Lady Slipper in the sun was warm enough to fool a Mosquito into thinking it was flesh. (One less on me!)
Taken at the macro range of the tel end of the zoom on the H50 at 465mm equivalent, and from a low angle using the tip-out LCD: the background is nicely soft and full of bokeh. Using the far reaches of the zoom did, however, push the ISO up to 400 but the H50 managed a detailed image anyway. Not bad for a tiny sensor.
Sony DSC H50 at 465mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/125 @ ISO 400. Programed auto.
Cropped in Lightroom for composition. Just my usual added Clarity and Vibrance, and sharpen.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
5/29/2009
Luminous Lady Slipper
So, okay, I thought (and maybe you thought) that I was done with Lady Slippers. I got more and better shots of Lady Slippers this year than ever before because there were more and better Lady Slippers.
Then, last Saturday, I took a walk down to my local warbler hole for some birding and video (hopefully), and went off on a side trail looking for Rhodora in bloom, and there they were…thousands of Lady Slippers! Lady Slippers in the early sun, sneaking in across the forest floor. 1000’s sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but it is not. Within a 1/4 mile I am totally confident that a count of Lady Slippers visible from the trail would have totaled over 1000. I have never seen anything remotely like it.
When the light is behind a Lady Slipper, two things happen. Light gets caught in the fine hairs that cover the whole plant, and the inflated petal just lights up as though it was filled with, well, light! Catching the effect is difficult but not impossible. Maybe best is when you can get the flower against a dark background where the sun isn’t hitting, but a well out-of-focus forest isn’t all bad. Bokeh. Lots of potential for Bokeh.
In this shot, I found the added bonus of the Star Flower nestled up against the Lady Slipper.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro (taken just about touching the LS). F3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programed auto.
Slight Recovery in Lightroom, along with added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen. Blackpoint to the right. Cropped for composition. Because the background was a bit too distracting, I used the Local Adjustments brush to paint on a mask over the background, and then decreased Clarity and Contrast.
From Around Home Kennebunk ME.
5/19/2009
Blue-bead Lily, from above
An alternative view of what I now know to be Blue-bead Lily (Clintonia borealis) at Rachel Carson NWR. I like the way the flower floats above the smooth curves of the leaves.
On the last two shots, I have gotten some advice over at one of the digital photography listserves I frequent. Some feel that the backgrounds are still too much in focus and detract from the flowers. Part of it is, they assert, the limitations of my equipment. The Sony DSC H50 is an advanced Point and Shoot and the assumption is that the small (tiny) sensor in these cameras makes for smaller lenses and smaller physical apertures which makes it difficult to produce a shallow enough depth of field.
Undoubtedly they will say the same of this. Of course, I am not trying for the traditional flower shot, with the flower isolated against a dark or completely blurry background. These are more enviornmental shots, intended to capture some of the context of the flower, with the background making a real contribution to the overall image. Not portrait of a flower, but flower in forest or flower in meadow, or flower in the world.
Whether or not they work for you that way, or meet your expectations of flower photography, is, of course, another question…and one I can not answer.
Sony DSC H50 at about 465mm equivalent. Macro. F6.3 @ 1/40th @ ISO 100. (The H50s image stabalization makes this kind of shot possible without a tripod.) Programed auto. -.7EV exposure compensation.
Cropped slightly for effect. Added Vibrance (very little, since it would have over amped the yellow), Clarity, and sharpen in Lightroom.
5/18/2009
Trout Lily (at least what they call Trout Lily in Maine)
This may, or may not, be Trout Lily. That is what I have always called it, but google turns up several different plants by that common name, and none of them are this one?? [ed. note: it is more commonly Blue-bead Lily (Clintonia borealis)] Anyway, it always blooms between the Trillium and Lady Slipper here in southern Maine, overlapping both. Because of the unique greenish yellow color, it is a difficult flower to photograph. The sensor wants to render it either too green or too yellow, and the subdued light of the overcast morning did not help. It took more than usual color adjustment in Lightroom to bring it back to reality.
Because of the down drooping flowers, it is an ideal candidate for the flip out LCD on the H50. You have to get really low to see it to full advantage. That low, care must be taken with the background, so that it does not overpower or overwhelm the flower itself.
I used Program Shift to select a smaller aperture for depth of field on the flower itself.
Sony DSC H50 at full wide and macro (taken from about 1/4 inch). F8.0 @ 1/40th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto. -.7 EV Exposure Compensation.
Besides the color adjustment (both temperature and tint), I added Clarity and Vibrance (very little vibrance to avoid bringing out the yellow too much), and sharpened in Lightroom. I used a graduated filter effect from the top to darken the background, and cropped a bit for composition.
From Rachel Carson NWR Seasons.
Trout Lily and Trillium
5/16/2009
Hard Flowers and Deep Bokeh
The husks of last year’s milkweed (I think) make a flower like presentation all through the marshy areas of Cape May. This cluster, isolated with the long end of the zoom, floating against the variegated green bokeh backdrop, makes for an interesting image.
Sony DSC H50 at 465mm equivalent. F4.5 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100. Programed Auto.
In Lightroom, a bit of recovery for the highlights, added Clarity and Vibrance, and the Sharpen landscapes preset. Bumped up the contrast slightly as well.
From Cape May 2009.
5/8/2009
Bench with Petals
Yes, I missed yesterday due to travel (really quite as bad as it sounds). But I am back.
Yesterday started with a rainy cab ride across Manhattan to the Central Park Boathouse where I was involved in an event for work. The rain persisted as a general gray dampness, dreary morning kind of thing, but during the event I was able to slip away for a few moments to explore the area around the lakes and the Ramble. And wouldn’t you know, Central Park has its charms, even on a rainy morning.
I am thinking these are flowering plum petals, which had fallen in drifts in the rain. These few had found a resting spot on a well tended park bench for a pleasing composition. The light was pretty dim and the H50 was pushed to ISO 400…but the amount of detain in the image does a good job of masking high ISO noise.
Sony DSC H50 at about 325mm equivalent (for framing). F4.0 @ 1/100th @ ISO 400. Programed Auto, -1.3 EV exposure compensation to hold detail in the petals against the dark wood.
In Lightroom, I applied just a little Recovery for highlights in the petals and raindrops. Clarity and Vibrance in the Presence panel. Landscape sharpen preset. I cropped down from the top of the image slightly to improve composition.
From Central Park.