'Indian Blanket' Flower & Bees

[c.j.]

Indian Blanket Gaillardia - hybrid "Splendens" Family Asteracea


Semi-hardy perennial, this wildflower hybrid is an elegant edition to the desert landscape.

The bees love it…





Canon Digital Rebel XT
Canon Macro Lens EF 100 MM 1:2.8

[Knight]

Wow what a color Burst

[paulnj]

That is one nice image of a very cool flower!

The lighting looks a bit harsh, do the flowers stay open early in the day or do they need full sun like a cactus flower?

[c.j.]

That is one nice image of a very cool flower!

The lighting looks a bit harsh, do the flowers stay open early in the day or do they need full sun like a cactus flower?

I agree it is too harsh! That time of day is the prime insect time, however, this blossom doesn't fold until sunset.

I'm too much of a newbie to get all the 'one stop down - AV change to…" as it is thrown at me. Help me out, here. (I hope to get up to everyone else's speed soon. Please explain how I could get a better image in 'photos for dummies' language.) I've been pretty lucky with being able to see what I want to capture with a camera and fortunate enough to be able to grab a bit of that through the viewfinder. Now, I'd like to take it past the 'point and hope' school of photography.

I'm pretty good with Photoshop, so I can fix a lot. I want to get better images at the outset.

I took some more images at sunset, with flash. I'm downsizing from RAW and I'll post a few. You can see that the flowers have a 'lifespan of color' from initial opening to maturity and then seedlings.

My gal has been gone for a week and is on her way home. I probably won't have the additional images until early morning.

[paulnj]

Let me see if I can find you some help with exposure. I have a job to shoot today in 1/2 an hour(tree climbintg comp), so it may be later today or..... this weekend .

[Loupey]

I think that in direct sunlight, this is representative of what you actually saw. The only thing I would suggest is just bring down the brightness (or highlights) in Photoshop and possibly reduce the saturation a bit.

Curious, is this a fairly tight crop of the original capture or did you use a high ISO setting? I see some digital noise in the shadows. Just wondering where/how that came from.

Cool shot by the way. Originally, I thought there was only 1 bee. Cool that you caught 2 in one shot.

[c.j.]

Here's two shots rom late afternoon. Shot, cropped and sized to show one flower head, both cropped from one photo.The young flowers are more colorful, but, the bees prefer the older, mature flowers. ( I suspect more deveoped nectar supply.)

Loupey, I think you were right, that is pretty much representative of what I saw. I think that the noise was probably introduced by a shodow correction step in PS. These have had no corrections, other than the stated crop and re-sizing.

[paulnj]

Ah, so the white areas are actually white! I was thinking that may be blown areas from harsh lighting. These are much nicer to look at from the more pleasing lighting the late afternoon light gives.

[c.j.]

Curious, is this a fairly tight crop of the original capture or did you use a high ISO setting? I see some digital noise in the shadows. Just wondering where/how that came from.

Cool shot by the way. Originally, I thought there was only 1 bee. Cool that you caught 2 in one shot.

Here's the original full frame (with border added, of course). Print size, 6x9 at 350 dpi

Think I cropped out too much?


Thanks for the input.

CJ

[Loupey]

Thanks for the repost, CJ. It does help analyze the shot.

I don't know with what you are shooting. But for me, your original post would be about the maximum I would crop from this full frame (except of course if you were illustrating/demonstrating something).

Even though I only shoot with a 6.3MP slr, it is part of good technique to always crop with the camera. Even if I had a 1Ds (16MP) slr, I would still avoid cropping too much unless absolutely necessary.

That's why, in some of my macro and bird shots, if I cannot fill the frame, I use composition to make up for the lack of subject size.