(If the background has been replaced, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
This is the flower from the bud I posted recently, taken two days later. I was lucky to find it open enough with some soft morning light still persisting. It is in a very small pond which yielded only 7 flowers that year (last year – the garden was closed this year due to COVID). I missed the first two and only this one of the remainder was in a position to photograph well. It had drooped a little since I shot the bud and I had to handhold the camera, reaching out as far as I could at an awkward angle. I would have been happy to have an articulating viewfinder but several attempts yielded this frame. I might have risked tiptoeing into the water but it got deep fast.
Canon 5D4, Canon 100-400 II at 207mm, 1/200 at f/16, ISO 3200. (Noise cleans up a lot better than camera shake.) This is the full frame with a very small amount added on top. Some distracting things cloned out on the left. Only minor tonal adjustments in LR.
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Gorgeous image Diane. I was going to suggest boosting the saturation on the pink, because I found myself wishing that the petals popped a little more. But on second thought, I think the soft pink coloring is what makes this image so attractive. To my eye, it feels like a little could be cropped off of either the left or right side, in order to off-center the flower in the frame. But that’s just a personal preference - it’s certainly fine as it is. The sharpness and DOF are great. A beautiful shot - nice job.
Thanks guys! I had the same feeling about wanting the flower to pop a little more, but the color was very subtle. I’m thinking about boosting tonal detail in the petals in the top half. Centering was a quandary but I can’t lose the light on the edge of the leaf on the left. Maybe a little could come off the right, but not enough to make a big difference. The flower being almost centered in the leaf it is resting on seems to justify centering it.
Diane: Glad you were able to revisit the bud and get the same marvelous light. This is such an elegant and beautiful flower and you’ve captured that beauty superbly. Great effort, great result. >=))>
Thanks everyone! I decided the flower could use a little boost. It was easy to select with the Quick Selection tool and I did a little Detail Enhancer (in Nik Color Efex Pro) and then a slight contrast increase with a Curves layer, using the same selection. For the contrast layer I brushed off the mask at 50% opacity for the bottom petals.
