Experimenting with light (a 2th flower attempt)

[Seb]

Hello,

I wanted to reissue my first high key flower shot (posted here on july 2) but I didn't had a flower with petals that were thin enough and light enough in colour to try to duplicate the very same effect so I went for somewhat partly different.

It's a similar flower and I am only using natural day light through two windows but most of the light comes at angle from the right side rather than all the light coming from behind (first post).

f/9 1/2.5 sec 65mm iso 200

Please criticise.

Seb

[Janie]

I like it a lot, but there seems like some highlights on the flower are missing or something... not sure what though. It just seems slightly flat, although maybe photoshop can fix that. I know that posting on the web sometimes flattens the quality of the photos (hell, you've seen plenty of my flower shots and sometimes they look totally different when uploaded to the web!).

What does it look like with a black background? Maybe it's the background that is distracting from it?

[Lyra]

I like the color of the flower in this photo, but I feel it could use just a tad more light in the center and perhaps less on the petals. Maybe you could do a bit of dodging and burning in PS to get the flower that way. I also feel a darker background would give it a more dramatic effect.

[Seb]

Hello Janie and Lyra,

Thank you for commenting. I take good note of your suggestions. I don't think that I could achieve some dodging and burning in PS (well I may always try but this would purely be a trial and error, I am a total newbie with post processing).

Just for the records, the background is totally natural. I have done nothing to this picture other than a serious crop. The flower was facing 2 windows at 90 degrees (hence, natural light coming from two directions) and I spot metered on the core of the flower.
The background is simply way overexposed. I may try to play with layers in Photoshop though. I have never tried it but I will try to figure out how to turn the background into pure black. (I think that it would look neat if I manage to do it decently well).

regards

Seb

[Seb]

Say, one more thing.

Do you feel that the lower left corner where the petals are darker is noisy (and if so, is it too much noisy??).

I have been shooting this at ISO 200 so there should not be noise there but it seems that overexposing with spot metering leads to this. I am trying to figure out if this is normal or not...

thanks again

Seb

[Janie]

Use the magic wand to select the background and the paint bucket to dump black in the background. I realize it's natural but sometimes natural background is distracting! I think that is what is making the color fall flat. Blacken the background and do an auto contrast and you'll find it will perk right up and be absolutely gorgeous! Also, go to Hue Saturation and you can perk up the red & magenta there - also give the yellow more saturation - that is one area you really need to get to know in photoshop because it really has a huge effect on photos.

[Lyra]

Seb if you don't feel too comfortable with the dodge and burn, then you can give it the same effect after changing the background by adding a black oval vignette on a new layer with a feathering of 25 and adjusting the opacity. Just make an oval shape with the mask tool and transform your selection to the angle of the flower and apply the feather before inverting the mask and flood filling with the black. Before you deselect your mask just invert it again and select your image layer and adjust the levels in the middle to lighten it up.

BTW, I don't see any noise in that corner.