I posted that apricot-rose picture last night, late, and when I looked at it on the big screen at work this morning, I thought “Ouch, that’s borked”. It turns out that I’d cranked Lightroom’s “Fill Light” control all the way over to the right, liking the effect on the centre of the blossom, missing the damage elsewhere.
So I tried another take at it, trying to preserve some photointegrity. But then I decided that while I liked the second cut better, the first was not without its virtues and I couldn’t bring myself just to over-write it. So here are both, and your chance to have an opinion.
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See, the “Fill Light” control produces that weird and rather nice glow in the dark part of the blossom, but generates all sorts of weird artifacts on the green stems.
Maybe if I have insomnia tonight, I’ll break out full-bore Photoshop and get with the masking and see if I can have the best of both worlds. And I gotta say, what a nice flower that is.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: John Cowan (Aug 17 2007, at 04:32)
The map is not the territory, the photograph is not the flower.
"The Fool sees not the same Tree that the Wise Man sees." --William Blake.
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From: Jacek (Aug 17 2007, at 07:01)
Hi, IMHO if you could get rid of those alien artifacts on the dark green parts and lessen a bit the glow where it goes into a different, colder pinkish hue than the lit parts of the flower, I think it would be great. Maybe just not going all the way on that control? 8-)
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From: Elaine Nelson (Aug 17 2007, at 11:01)
The 2nd one is a very nice photo of a rose; the first one approaches art. I'd be tempted, actually, to go even one more step away from realism and take out the bud directly behind the bloom. Then it becomes the *idea* of a rose in late summer.
Or something like that.
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From: Alex Waterhouse-Hayward (Aug 18 2007, at 20:54)
By fiddling with Lightroom you are finally working with the idea of reducing your contrast.
A much simpler solution is to either get an assistant(that could be your wife) to hold a piece of white foam-core and to reflect light back on the dark side. You can control the amount of fill to your taste by having her move the foam-core closer of further away. If she is too busy with somehthing else you can clamp or gaffer tape the reflector to a light stand. In a pinch a shovel will work just fine.
Alexwh
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From: Lance (Aug 20 2007, at 07:40)
Both photos are beautiful, but I prefer the first hands down.
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