The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
I can’t keep track of the orchids I have shot. I’ve gone from shallow DOF to focus stacks and back. This one called out for soft, dreamy and shallow, although I have resisted “soft focus” techniques. But maybe I should try them on this one…
Specific Feedback
All comments welcome!
Technical Details
Very little done in LR – probably brought up Shadows. Stack of just a few to get the center of the flower.
Can we get an oooh-ahhh track to play here? I don’t care if you have eleventy billion shots of orchids, they’re all lovely. It seems to me that we techie photographers go down rabbit holes of technique all the time until the novelty wears off. Doing something new and fun can turn to do it just because you can and it takes a while to realize when one size doesn’t fit all. If that makes any sense.
So what do you mean by soft focus techniques? I think the way you’ve limited the stack works quite well here. The OOF echo flowers are a tad bright, but recognizable as more of the same and so the flow of them works well to fill our imaginations with the sinuous plant itself. At least I think of most orchids in that way.
Thanks, Kris! Hmmm – sound track – how about Spem in alium? (Thomas Tallis, 1570.) If you don’t know it, check it out – headphones mandatory unless you are seated right between the speakers and stoned.
The BG flower in the UL was bothering me a little – maybe it needs to be a little brighter? I was using the term soft focus in some general way. Back in the day there were highly-valued soft-focus lenses that had a special light-handling quality. Now we can do it digitally, but I didn’t here – just relied on the paper-thin DOF of a wide-open 100mm f/2.8 macro.
I tried my new Milky Way lens, which is f/1.4, but at 28mm it’s too wide and focus isn’t great at the MFD of 1 ft. Oddly, it is superb for pinpoint stars.
Lovely work on the main subject, Diane. The center of the upper left flower does draw my eye a trifle-you might try softening it a bit and/or doing a low opacity whitish overlay to fade it out.
Thanks, @Kris_Smith and @Dennis_Plank – I finally got back to this one and lightened the OOF bud on the left and I think it’s a definite improvement! Rather than use any painting techniques, I’ll always reach for tonal tweaks first, and this was just a quick masked curves – first a soft brush to select an area then use the Quick Selection tool to mask out the FG petals. The LL corner of the curve just raised. Posted above.
