Artwerks by Donna » flowers

Lighting Is Everything

Donna — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:42:28 +0000

It’s difficult to get a flower shot that is noteworthy. Flowers are pretty. If you can take a shot that’s in focus and if you have even the most rudimentary sense of design and composition, it’s fairly easy to take a photo that can at least to some degree, reproduce the beautiful thing you saw. Problem is, there are trillions of photos that look just like it in trillions of collections of every moderately talented digital photographer everywhere. I confess, most of my own flower shots fall into this category. But this one, I thought, was unique and dramatic, and oddly, quite accidental.

Late one afternoon following a summer rain, my grandson and I went for a walk in our neighborhood and took some wildflower shots. Around here, yellow daylilies grow wild just about everywhere. Most of my shots were pretty, but from a creative standpoint, just mundane and common ‘pretty flower shots.’ This shot, however, caught my eye as being unique, thanks to the backlighting that I captured quite by accident. Darkening the background added even more drama to the overall lighting effect. Then, duplicating that layer and applying the Overlay Blending option bumped up the contrast and saturation and really made the bloom pop. That was really an accident too.

Well, God bless the accidental accidents. Sometimes they’re just downright GOOD.

(Click on the preview above to pull up a full view of the picture.)

Yellow Butterfly

Donna — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:29:36 +0000

I took this shot late one summer season when I had discovered I could get pretty good macro shots with my old Sony Cybershot DSC-F717. There was a fluttering of winged visitors at my paltry stand of sunflowers that I had grown from seeds Wilma had given me. I took loads of shots…the butterflies were far more interested in the flowers than with me, which worked in my favor. What DIDN’T work in my favor was a tendency that still haunts my shooting expeditions to this day. I see something that excites me, and in my excitement to get the shot, I forget all the technical details of getting a good shot, like exposures, shooting modes, focus, etc., not to mention an unsteady shooting hand. I did manage to get a few good shots that day though, in spite of myself…this was one.

(Click on the preview above to pull up a full view of the picture.)

Green Beetle

Donna — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:28:52 +0000

There was very little to be done to this photo, other than some of the most common minor adjustments. This beetle pulled off this breathtaking image all by himself, and honestly, this photo does not do his beauty justice. I had planted some fragrant lilies around the base of one of our pecan trees in the backyard and had headed out to get some shots of the blooms after another of those summer rains. I found this little fellow enjoying my new fragrant blooms too, and thought his deep, iridescent emerald coloring would make great contrast on the white bloom. The beetle was between 1-1.5″ long and was as striking as any glittering jewel I’ve ever seen in a jewelry store.

(Click on the preview above to pull up a full view of the picture.)