Wednesday, August 19, 2009

The Fascinating World of Macro

I think this is another Zinnia although I could not find any on the flower sites that looked exactly like this one. I find macro and close-up images of flowers so amazing --- the symmetry, the miniature flowers inside a flower, the HAIRS on the edges of petals, the vibrant colors, the texture that does not appear to the naked eye. I am also usually surprised that I think I am photographing a flawless flower and when I look at my images on the computer I find spots or tiny bugs or dog fur that I did not know was there (yes, I have had my annual eye exam). So, this flower was cleaned up just a little bit, not much. And I combined two images taken with slightly different focusing to get as much sharp as I could. The flower is actually about 2 inches in diameter.

Nikon D200, 60mm macro lens with +2 close-up filter at f5 and 1/50th, ISO 100, cloudy whitebalance
Post processing: Increased exposure and blacks and the recovery slider in ACR, in CS3 I cloned out some spots, layered another image with a slightly sharper portion of the center, levels layer for global brightening, Punch Drunk action by Kubota masked to show in the center only, sharpened with the highpass filter in Softlight






3 comments:

  1. I like the off-center placement but you may want to check the edges of the pedals on the right.

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  2. Wayne, I am not sure what you want me to check. The petals have tiny hairs that are being highlighted by the way the light is hitting the edges. Maybe it appears as sharpening artifacts, but the close up looks OK on my monitor. Because I was using a close up filter on my macro lens the depth of field is extremely small so perhaps that is part of the problem you are seeing.

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  3. I think that the glowing edge is due to the small hairs on the plant that allow a lot of light to pass through and thus making them appear to glow. There are a lot of plants that seem to do this.

    As to your photo, I really like the color combination--it pops!

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