Flaming Flower . . .

[gahspidy]

I had been sitting on this one, sometimes not sure about it. But lately i keep coming across it and it strikes me well.
This was shot in a dark room with a Mag flashlight painting light over the top and back to backlight most of the petals.
what are your feelings on this?
Thanks

[jar_e]

Gary,

Great shot imo. I love the colors, the texture, and the strong presence of it and the way it fills the frame. I personally might have tried a little more looking down on the shot, but this is alright as is.

Nice shot,

Jared

[LeeIs]

The composition is good. But the image as a whole other than the sharp black background just isn't contrasty enough for me. It's kinda greyed out & not strong enough. I wish the reds were deeper, the highlights stronger and the shadows a bit darker. You know just crisper or more vibrant.

[Overbeyond]

Have never done any of this type of photography so not the best qualified to critique.
But here goes. On first sight I saw the light increasing evenly from bottom to top (or top to bottom) and thought this is grand. Then on closer inspection I see what appears to be straight lines of a square block of shadow at around centre of the flower. This line goes upwards from left to right.
Then again the manner of lighting cannot have been easy to get right.
But it is very calm lighting and makes for a very attractive and easy on the eye photograph. Can imagine this looking really well on the front room wall.
As I saw I'm not the best one for this.
Tom

[Ultra Magnus]

I'm just surprised and impressed that you got such good results with a mag flashlight! I dig it but note the same diagonal shadow line as Overbeyond stated.

[dbutler]

I think this is simply lovely. I think a tweaking of saturation and contrast (and just a bit) will bring out the pop factor. I hope you don't mind but I ran it through my Velvia Vision plug in and it seemed to perk up with some intensity and warmth. I think it's a definite keeper!

[juzzus]

I'm not too sure if this was the best angle to take , somehow the overall feel about this pic is rather flat ... no offence ;)

[payn817]

IMO, it doesn't really need a boost. I like the dark, subtle colors. It looks elegant to me.

[Seb]

I had been sitting on this one, sometimes not sure about it. But lately i keep coming across it and it strikes me well.
This was shot in a dark room with a Mag flashlight painting light over the top and back to backlight most of the petals.
what are your feelings on this?
Thanks

Gary, my first thought on this was that the picture was a little too muted and that it needed more contrast and saturation. But then, the more I look at it, the more I like it. It just have that slightly weird/spooky visual signature of yours and it works. This may be unsettling at first because people most likely don't expect that kind of aesthetic from a flower photograph but I think that this gives the shot some extra personality and an uniqueness factor. I like your composition too.

My only issue is the shadow that Tom has identified.

regards

Seb

[swmdrayfan]

I found this one unique in the fact that you used a mag flashlight. Got me to thinking about maybe trying something of my own one of these long winter nights. Since you were aiming for the backlit angle, it isn't bad. At any time did you play with different positions with the light?

[drg]

Disclaimer: My comments are biased because I've been playing with a couple of these flowers for a few days myself.

I like the composition and selection of the background. The colors need to be richer which is certainly a function of the lighting I am sure. The angle of the lighting and the shadow I think works fine. I just wish there was more of it to up the saturation and contrast.

Did you do any others with this blossom? I've been finding that just very slight variations can make huge differences. When I'm holding a light I'll get several photos I think should be similar and they will vary from better than I expected to the big delete key or not even scanning the negative.

I know how to shoot flowers for catalogs, but alas, they are just catalog flowers then. Got to try flashlights more often.

[gahspidy]

Jared, Liban, Tom, bmadau, D, juzzus, payn817, Seb, swmdrayfan, drg. . .thanks for commenting.
Many have commented on the lack of adequate saturation, and that may be. I originally had the image much more saturated and contrasty, and I just thought "this is typical" Also, upon looking at the gamut warning in PS, most of the flower was indicating way out of gamut. So, I adjusted the shadows to bring out more detail and reduced the highlights abit and the saturation and brought most of the flower back into gamut. At first, as Seb put it, it seemed to be lacking, but the more I looked at it the more I felt I liked the detail, texture and subtle nuances in tones that reducing the stauration brought out in exchange. Also gave it the unusual look that i tend to go for. I see this is not working for most , but it was a deliberate decision to go that way
swmdrayfan. . . yes, i was moving the light around to various different angles until i finally settled on the angle that best brought out and illuminated all the petals. The diagonal shadow that Tom mentioned is from the upper petals shading the light from the lower ones. i guess a second light would have helped, but I think i like the darkness towrds the bottom.
drg . . .I did do about 4 or 5 shots at slightly different variations, and it's true, there can big completely different images from slight shifts in the lighting. This was the one that was most evenly and closest to my intent. The mag flashlight is a great little lighting tool for special effects, and the cool white light leaves very little to no color casts. another good feature about it is you can focus the beam wide for a softer effect or beam it narrow like a spot light .

Strange thing going on here, I cannot see my picture displayed in this thread any more, but from the comments it appears everyone else can still see it.

[dbutler]

Gary, I can see what you mean about how it suddenly seems to change from "not enough punch " to "It's great as it is". I've come back to read the thread several times to see what others have had to say, and the more I look at the flower (and yes, it's still there) the more I think that my initial reaction was wrong. Of course, I'm also just learning to retrain my eye to get away from the the intense colors and contrast that I am always drawn to and see the beauty of the less-than-overdone.