From one of my favorite gardens, Georgia Coastal Botanical Gardens (known to myself and other locals as the Bamboo Farm), This is one of the large varieties of Camellias grown there.
This is known as “Pink Perfection” for obvious reasons.
I have used a variety of gradients and some desaturation of the OOF blossoms. Do these look heavy handed to you?
Any pertinent technical details:
Camera Info: Nikon D750, HH
Lens: VR 300mm f/4E
Focal Length: 300mm
Focus Mode: AF-C
AF-Area Mode: Group Area AF
VR: ON
Aperture: f/8
Shutter Speed: 1/60s
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: -0.3EV
Exposure Tuning:
Metering: Matrix
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 800
87% of full frame
PP in LR/PS CC 2018, Topaz & Camera Raw filters, TK sharpen for web @ 45%
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Phil: You always do a great job with these. The capture of the main bloom is perfect. I would be tempted to tighten this up all around, especially from the left and from the LRC. The bud or spent flower above the flower grabs a bit more attention than I would like. I think I would fade it somehow to decrease its prominence. >=))>
I don’t find your treatments heavy handed at all, Phil. I do find my eye pulled to the out of focus bloom immediately above the flower. I’m not sure what you can do about it, short of cloning. It just occurred to me that a strategy for heavily flowered plants like this might be to take some foliage shots at the same time so you can steal some background leaves from them, if needed.
Beautiful work on the bloom and the rest of the image.
Phil
Very compelling photo of this flower. That 300 mm lens is sweet, isn’t it?
I also looked at that one OOF flower at the top. You might want to crop just a tad tighter at the top and also darken that flower just a bit more. Dennis’s suggestion of taking a shot of other foliage at the same time and using that to cover these little trouble areas is a fine one . I have never done that but see it as a possible solution.
