Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Over the years I’ve seen plenty of Clintonia borealis in the woods, but haven’t ever photographed it seriously. I tried to this year and this is one shot I took a lot of pains over. I was even in a ditch by the side of the road to do it - ha! It isn’t perfect, and I processed it almost as a challenge to myself. Doing so tested my skills with Zerene retouching, let me tell you! There are some overlap areas that are wonky, but the nature of lenses makes it unavoidable.
These are gorgeous little lilies and I found that the ones that get more sun bloom more readily than the ones in deep shade. I have’t figured out if there is a timing difference and maybe the ones on the forest floor bloom later. The scientific name is in honor of one-time-Governor of NY, DeWitt Clinton and their common name, Blue Bead Lily, is apt because the fruit is vivid blue. They have two basal leaves per plant and can sometimes be confused with Lady’s Slipper leaves, but they aren’t deeply grooved and are shinier. A wonderful little forest friend.
Specific Feedback
If you notice any processing glitches/oversights, let me know. It isn’t perfect, but I think I’ve corrected everything I know how to. There’s only a hint of stem - is that enough?
Technical Details
Tripod - did manual focus point selection when the breeze died down & used an LED panel for sidelight modeling.
Lr for the initial RAW processing including raising the blacks and lowering the exposure a bit. Also lowered the highlights and then ran a denoise AI action on each shot I was going to use in the stack. 10 photos run at once made the fans run on my MacBook Pro M2 Max - so funny and surprising when they come on - hey, what’s that noise?
10 or so shots went into Zerene and I used a DMap image at a 95% contrast threshold value as the base and then painted in a lot of PMax detail and then went to the original files to use those when optimal.
The TIF went into Photoshop so I could do some clone stamping to further reduce halos and define edges better. Ran a few actions w/the TK8 panel - clarity on just the flower, hue/saturation adjustment for the yellow in the flower which should be light and slightly green, a couple curves layers to darken the bg and to lift the mid tones in the flowers. Crazy!