A Photographic Look at Passion

sm4him · Aug 30, 2013

Passionflowers, anyway.

Passionflowers never fail to captivate me. Saw this one last weekend.

1.

2.

3.

4.

As always, C&C, general comments and witty banter are appreciated.

Derrel · Aug 30, 2013

Doggone it...somebody drained the last dregs out of the quart carton of Witty Banter that I had stashed in the fridge behind the half watermelon on a dinner plate....doggone it!!!!! I thought for sure the watermelon would hide it enough! Guess not!

"Ah, well, to the photos, Robin!" No, wait, that's Batman's line...anyway...I really like the light,airy feeling of #4...very nice feeling to the color treatment in that one. actually, the color, the processing, the light, the overall "vibe" on these is most agreeable to me. I like the white balance, the color rendering, and the colors of the subjects themselves. I also kind of like shot #2 also.

Once a person gets into this degree of magnification, unless focus stacking is used, there's going to be some depth of field issues, which may or may not affect how the viewers feel about the subject matter. For me, the ones with the large OOF areas, shots #1 and #3, I'm not diggin those...even though the flowers themselves are pretty cool. (Oh, and once again, congratulations on the transit system billboard pics you shot!)

sm4him · Aug 31, 2013

Derrel said:
Doggone it...somebody drained the last dregs out of the quart carton of Witty Banter that I had stashed in the fridge behind the half watermelon on a dinner plate....doggone it!!!!! I thought for sure the watermelon would hide it enough! Guess not!

"Ah, well, to the photos, Robin!" No, wait, that's Batman's line...anyway...I really like the light,airy feeling of #4...very nice feeling to the color treatment in that one. actually, the color, the processing, the light, the overall "vibe" on these is most agreeable to me. I like the white balance, the color rendering, and the colors of the subjects themselves. I also kind of like shot #2 also.

Once a person gets into this degree of magnification, unless focus stacking is used, there's going to be some depth of field issues, which may or may not affect how the viewers feel about the subject matter. For me, the ones with the large OOF areas, shots #1 and #3, I'm not diggin those...even though the flowers themselves are pretty cool. (Oh, and once again, congratulations on the transit system billboard pics you shot!)

I just HATE it when someone takes the last of my witty banter. Fortunately, they *rarely* ever find my little stash of snarky sarcasm. :lmao:

Thanks, Derrel. I think we're on the same page, or at least in the same chapter. I really *want* to love these--and I *like* them. I really, really like them. They just don't QUITE make my heart sing.

One of these days, I'll spend some time learning to do focus stacking, but it scares me.

I wouldn't have tried to focus stack these anyway, because that's not what I was going for here. On the other hand, I didn't quite achieve what I *was* going for, so there's that.

BanditPhotographyNW · Aug 31, 2013

Passionflower... Never heard of such a thing...Beautiful pics...

bc_steve · Aug 31, 2013

I really like what the second one looks like when I imagine the whole shot in focus. I've only done focus stacking once, but it wasn't too difficult. Once you've taken the pics, it's pretty automatic in photoshop.

Before you take that automated step I'd do any editing to the RAW files first and together as a group, and then click "Done" instead of "Open" because once Photoshop has done the stacking you'll be beyong the RAW conversion. And make sure that you take enough shots so that you aren't left with missed areas that are out of focus.

that's what I learned from my experience, good luck if you try it!