A Personal Photo Challenge - Flowers

It’s time for A Personal Photo Challenge! “Flowers” is the theme this month.

This is going to be a fun challenge! Blog authors and readers can’t help but smile when flowers are featured in blog posts. Colorful and elegant blooms cheer our souls! Consequently, many bloggers want to learn how to improve their flower photography skills.

I prepared two images for this challenge. One of them is a bit quirky. Yeah, I have to mix it up a little bit for myself! The other photo is more traditional in composition, but I transformed it into something extra yummy in the post-processing step. I am unusually content with my final results. It’s such a rare thing, LOL.

The first photo shows one of my beloved daffodil blooms. It was one of the last of the spring season. I wanted to take a little different approach in the composition. The “simplicity” challenge from last month was fresh in my mind when I set up this shot. I wanted it to be as simple as possible, so I fearlessly added a lot of negative space and offset the subject. Also, I pretended to be another flower in the flowerbed! (Yes, I warned you this image was quirky.) What would be my view if I were a daffodil, sitting in the flowerbed? Why, I would have a sibling partially blocking my view!

You may get the impression that I took the shot out in the flowerbed. However, I set it up inside, with the flower in a vase next to my office window. The distant out-of-focus green color in the background is a view through the window of our front yard grass. I used a tripod for the camera and employed a reflector to slightly brighten up the backside of the flower head. A beam of natural, late afternoon light provided the backlighting. I used the Nikon D90 with an 85mm macro lens.

As a result of this little experiment, I happily discovered that there is a lot of beauty in the back of a daffodil bloom. I hope that you agree.

daffodil’s flipside

f/20, 1/125 second, ISO 400

I took the second photo last month when we visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. After a leisurely day in Cades Cove, we stopped on the park’s Laurel Creek Road and admired some blooming wildflowers. No hiking was involved because gorgeous blooms were on display just a few feet from the pavement. At that point in the day, I was too tired and lazy to break out the tripod. So I took the image handheld with the Nikon D800. I don’t have a full-frame macro lens for that camera yet, so I used my trusty, all-purpose 28-300mm zoom lens at the 300mm setting.

I took extra care in the post-processing. After making some of my usual adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw, I applied a few of my favorite Nik Color Efex filters, including a soft glow and vignette. Some artful dodging and burning was also performed. I’m very pleased with the end result.

white trillium on Laurel Creek Road

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

f/11, 1/160, ISO 560

Now that you’ve seen my photos and read my post, I hope you will hop over to A Personal Photo Challenge blog and check out the creative efforts of other participants. Thank you so much!