The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This plant has been my nemesis (one of them) for years. It only blooms in early summer when everything else is dead dry, and only at twilight, with the flowers folding up by dawn. And it’s rare for it to even survive to bloom as deer eat it. The flowers are about 1/2" across and the spindly branches are 2-3 ft tall. Wind comes up here in the afternoons and there is still quite a bit of movement at dusk. So it’s a challenge to shoot. This one, which survived the deer, is on a steep slope of loose soil and small rocks, which made it difficult to shoot, and it needed a focus stack to get enough DOF. So it’s not perfect. This was the next-to-last night for any buds. You can see one of the few remaining buds here, and a faded bloom from yesterday, which I think I should clone out. Hope I can do better next year.
Specific Feedback
All comments welcome.
Technical Details
No LR adjustments. Two sets of stacks of maybe 15 frames each – one caught the front of the flower and the other the back, probably because it moved after focusing and before hitting the shutter to start the stack. So after processing each I stacked the two of the resulting frames. There were edge artifacts from some movement during the slow exposures that I cloned out.
Diane, I can see all the fine detail and time spent on the image. Just returning to flowers / macro after a several year hiatus. Doing some reading / viewing of macro techniques for a refresh of techniques, you checked a number of the recommended boxes.
One thought on the images comes to mind, any thoughts on changing the color (if possible) on the background to make the subject pop a bit more? Cheers.
Oh man that sounds like a struggle, but I know how it is when you have a rare or difficult species on your hands. I wonder if fencing could work to protect more of these? Deer are vermin!
I like the bud, but not the faded flower so maybe a clone job would be good here. The stack looks ok despite the issues you describe. Did you use slabbing to get the substacks or did you do them manually? I did them that way until I discovered slabbing and so now use the auto way!
Anyway, I really like the delicacy on display here. It looks like it’s a type of lily. Quite beautiful.
Thanks, @gDan52, @Judi_Hastings and @Kris_Smith! I couldn’t find a way to do much with the neutral BG without a very tedious selection of the flower, but bringing up the white end of a curve helped boost the flower. I picked the dead bloom and did a bit more touchup cloning.
Kris, I didn’t intentionally slab – the tripod and I were both so unstable on a steep loose slope that I just happened to get two overlapping stacks. I wasn’t careful enough about the starting points or the depth. I do find a handful scattered around on the property every spring, apparently perennial. I’m hoping this one will scatter seed but just read that it can take 10 years to make a flowering plant. I’ll try to put cages around the ones I find next spring. Most will be in easier locations.
Composition wasn’t great either, with the bloom stalk hidden behind the petal. I tried several compositions but with the air movement and low light, this was the best. Next year…
