Blossomville

[aster]

I love the photo too gio67,

Would love to see the next 50 for the full mark.

Yildiz

[Armen Gharib]

[Dr. Harout]

Armen, the second one is great.

[Armen Gharib]

Doc here is another version of the same blossoms

[David Kilpatrick]

To resume this, I finally got out for a pre-sunset walk with my A900 and Sigma 70-200mm HSM. This lens is winning me over seriously. I do not think I have ever owned a better lens. I had a load of flowers shot on the 100mm Macro AF Minolta, and honestly - the bokeh and feel is crude. The Sigma bokeh is so smooth.

But this is not the real bokeh. This is two entirely separate hand-held images, no tripod, differently focused, overlaid and lined up in Photoshop then blended down using Vivid blending mode. The front and rear flowers were blowing in the wind, and combined with focusing first on the front, then the rear pair of wild geranium heads the movement is noticeable. This creates the unusual ghost and glow effects.



I just love the colours the A900 has produced in the originals - emphasised by the layer blending.

David

[Javelin]

Thats a neat effect David. Someone described that same effect to use on portraits. where you take one razor sharp image and one defocused image and combine them like that. it makes that same sort of glow.

Heres a couple from the weekend. one of the flowers actually fell of as I took this first frame.. must be ghosts




I used a new version of Picasa on these instead of ACDsee or PS. they added a slider to their sharpen tool instead of the incremental button presses they had before. you can actually turn it down from default.

[aster]

David;

Lovely outcome with the geranium. The composition appears half real and half surreal depending which focus area one looks at.

Javelin;

These are one of the nicest blossoms I've seen. Each blossom has that matte opacity and monolithic softness as though carved out of a specially-coloured-wax. I love such flowers that appear as though waxed or sculpted but have none close-by.

Now, let me see if I can achieve similar effects with the wild rose photos I took late this morning.

Yildiz

[Greg Beetham]

There are quite a few of these in bloom around town at the moment, I don't know what sort they are but they sure are purty. (If your really into pink that is)
Greg

KM5D 24-105

[jbtaylor]

The wife's Day Lillies are starting up this week. There are so many buds that it will take weeks for them all to bloom. Here is the first set. This is the a700 tied to the KM 100mm 2.8 Macro.

[caporip]

[Greg Beetham]

The pink Azalea is looking nice here at the moment.
Greg

[Birma]

Nice picture Greg, and thank you for re-opening one of my favourite threads. Looking back up the thread I really like Javelin's small blue flowers (Forget-me-nots?) and I like the effect in DK's last shot. Could this also be done by duplicating the sharp shot, adding gaussian blur, and then combining? I forget the term for this, but I like the effect.

[Greg Beetham]

Thanks Mate,
I couldn't decide whether I liked DK's visual art effect or not, I think I sort of expected the flower/s that's been moved by the wind to be represented as a smudge rather than looking like it melted, but it might grow on me....

Yes Javelin's simple little blue flowers do tend too punch above their weight for some reason, I can't quite put my finger on that either.

I don't mind Caporip's photo either, I've seen that type of flower before somewhere but I can't remember where...
Greg

ps There is all sorts of artistic effects, even in Elements there's plenty, I've never really stopped to play with them, probably should have a dabble sometime just for fun...

[aster]

Hi Greg,

The Azalea looks gorgeous! It's the beginning of autumn for us and blossoms are gone to be replaced by full green leaves fading in colour right now. Amazing how we exchanged the seasons yet once again, as would be expected.

I think that what gives Javelin's blue flowers the punchy look is its cetrical features: the draped exturusions that give a 3d appearance and the tiny circle of yellow stamens. I has a 3d sculpted look as though shaped by fingers out of blue wax.

Thanks for the mini CPR to the thread!

Yildiz

[David Kilpatrick]

In Scotland we have a very long autumn. Some trees started changing colour in August, and some will hang on until December. One thing which seems to happen now (climate change) is that we have a growing season all year and the grass stays very green unless we get snow in February. I remember as a kid thinking that September meant autumn but these days it's late October and into November.

David