What changed: Had the project open in Zerene still so went back for another look and massaged the retouching again. Not sure it made a difference, but here it is. Also didn’t like the crap in the upper left corner where I removed some stuff, it looks better now.
Added after receiving feedback from the community.
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
It was supposed to be cloudy for much longer than it turned out yesterday, but I did wander by the Prairie River for a bit and one of the many, many wildflowers found there is Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris). It’s a showy and quite large perennial in the buttercup family and I’ve always loved it because it lands such an intense splash of color. The palustris part of its Latin name refers to wetlands, swamps or other marshy bits that it prefers, so it’s often found here in roadside ditches. The US Forest Service says that the most common pollinator is hoverflies. How fun. I’m going to try to remember to go look for the fruit it produces because I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed it before.
Specific Feedback
Yep, the stack isn’t perfect. The infernal wind made things difficult and what was an 8 or 9 image stack was reduced to 4 in the end so a couple of frames I thought might work just threw the whole thing off. Bah. Anything look fixable up there? Other input?
Technical Details
Tripod & CPL on the lens and photographer holding up my jacket to throw shade on the scene. Yay.
Lr for basic global processing to improve overall contrast, color, sharpness and texture. Zerene for the stack and I did a lot of retouching (some at 400%) on a DMap image. TIFF back into Lr for a crop with slight rotation, some distraction removal and masking to highlight the flower cluster and reduce the background’s presence somewhat.
Kris, the flowers and their surroundings are very attractive. The water drops are a great addition. Yes, I see that there’s a mixture of soft and sharp throughout the view. You might be able to overcome these using a higher iso. As long as your shutter is fast enough to freeze the motion and the only motion is movement of all parts in unison, the stacking should be able to handle the motion.
The detail looks just fine to me! The yellows are very nicely detailed – bright and rich without looking too saturated. There is a very nice variability in each flower and leaf. And the greens and water droplets sing of spring.
It’s been horribly dry and windy here for several days with trees down and power outages everywhere. Remarkably, no fires anywhere close.
Thanks @Mark_Seaver & @Diane_Miller - funny about changing up settings - I thought I had a higher ISO and so didn’t look a the shutter speed. Doh. I was so worried about losing the light that I was in a hurry so shame on me. Was surprised the yellows came out as well as they did since they often overshoot like a cranky thermostat. We’ve had a lot of rain and will get more this week I think. We had some fire danger for a while, but nothing like your area Diane. My cousin’s son is a firefighter out that way I believe. He’s just started and is still in his 20s I think. Brave guy.
Kris: What a delightful find and conditions. The yellow is indeed handled very nicely and your subtle revisions made an already good image even better. The drops are icing on a very fine cake. >=))>
I think you ended up with plenty in the stack to make this work, Kris. The detail in the blooms and leaves and even the surrounding twigs and the lichen on them is superb. It’s interesting that yours are such an intense yellow. The ones I’m familiar with are white with fairly long stems and basal leaves, though I just looked in our local “bible” for wild plants and it does say the yellow is in this area, though rare. I can see why you like it-that yellow is off-the-charts intense.
thanks @Bill_Fach & @Dennis_Plank - Yeah, I was pretty happy they were blooming and not too battered by the recent rain. Some of the Yellow wood violets looked a bit bedraggled. They really are that yellow - dandelion yellow and their leaves are large and intensely green. A welcome sight for sure.
