As I noted yesterday, I was having no luck with pictures of daffodils. The problem is that the outer fringe of petals is so much lighter than the inner trumpet that it’s hard to make the trumpet look good without over-exposing the fringe. I’ve still got some ideas to explore, but I am making progress, I think.
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After I edited these, I ran across Shelley Powers’ magnificent Daffodils photo-essay, suggesting that I’m missing the point.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: roberthahn (Mar 25 2007, at 19:33)
The composition seems a bit strange, Tim - why are you consistently shooting pictures of them from the left side? All the daffodils seem to be 'looking' off to the side but you're not capturing what they're 'looking at', nor do the photos indicate that you care. I wonder if you should recompose the pics so that they're a bit to one side of straight on - maybe you'll get some interesting imagery there.
Crikey, you got the art critic in me coming out...
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From: Metaproof (Mar 26 2007, at 04:18)
You might find this is a saturation problem rather than a standard exposure problem.
Saturated yellows and oranges lie outside the gamut of the sRGB and Adobe RGB(1998) colour spaces.
There's a good explanation of this in Bruce Fraser's Real World Camera Raw book
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321334094/
Have a look at the histograms for the individual channels of your image. You might find horrendous clipping at the high end.
If you're shooting RAW then editing in a wider colour space like ProPhoto RGB should help.
If you're shooting JPEGs then I can only wish you luck, although you might like to try combining two exposures to get the results you want: a standard exposure for the surroundings, and an under-exposure for the yellows.
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From: Adam (Mar 26 2007, at 09:40)
If BPOTD has taught me anything, it's that composition is as important as color and lighting. Try getting down at eye level with the flower, taking from different angles (different sides, from below, etc).
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From: Jon Ellis (Mar 28 2007, at 23:11)
It's much easier to just stick to the stems!
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