Another Boring Flower Picture

Wyjid · Mar 10, 2009

i ound this hibiscus at the edge of the jungle near where we were staying. it was shade everywhere except for a shaft of sun that lit this one flower.

CraniumDesigns · Mar 10, 2009

way too dark. not that interesting. boring, exactly.

Wyjid · Mar 10, 2009

well i disagree about the darkness, any brighter and the whole flower gets blown. no detail or texture, just a white blob. the interest is a matter of opinion though. (the boring flower picture was a reference to a photo mag i was reading that made a coment about all still life flower shots being less than exciting)

rufus5150 · Mar 10, 2009

You can boost the midtones/dark bits without blowing out the highlights by using the 'shadow/highlight' adjustment in photoshop. It would, however, work much better on the raw file than a shrunk-down jpeg where the pixels are already lost.

When I did this to your jpeg, it brought out some interesting light artifacts. I left them.

I also did a small tonal adjustment with curves to bring out the highlights without blowing them.

Josh66 · Mar 10, 2009

Well, it's not the typical "flower picture" - which, for me, makes it 'not boring'. I like it.

Wyjid · Mar 10, 2009

yes thank you for the edit, it looks quite nice. but i really didn't want to with this one that much. i had a couple like that, but this one i burned out everything i didn't want to see. i may touch up the leaves a wee wee bit though. that could be nice.

rufus5150 · Mar 10, 2009

Wyjid said:
yes thank you for the edit, it looks quite nice. but i really didn't want to with this one that much. i had a couple like that, but this one i burned out everything i didn't want to see. i may touch up the leaves a wee wee bit though. that could be nice.

Ahh, okay. I saw you said if it were any brighter it would clip and I didn't think that was the case.

Wyjid · Mar 11, 2009

ooohhhh right right right right riiiiiight! i unerstan. and it does a bit, not totally blown you're right, that was me exagerating, but a loss of detail to be sure. as i said though i do like the slightly brightened leaves.

LaFoto · Mar 11, 2009

I opened up this thread last thing yesterday night, and my daughter was with me looking, and we arrived, opened it and both immediately went "Hey, this one's GOOD!"
It is DIFFERENT, and therefore far from being boring! And while I'd like to see some of the leaves a tad brighter (you know that I actually mean "greener", of course

), the flower should NOT BE TOUCHED. Nor should any more of the background begin to show. Hence, if you wanted to work on it, work in the leaves individually and see what that can do... but all in all I really like this photo!

Al-Wazeer · Mar 11, 2009

First, it really nice NOT boring!
i like the leaves in the editing but i like everything else in the original pic
so if you can combine between them to make this photo 100% perfect!