By André Costantini
The first signs of spring are starting to show in Southern NY State. Albeit with more rain then I would like to see, but I guess it is rain that makes the flowers grow. Out in the backyard with my rain slicker and my Tamron 60mm, I snapped a quick shot of what nature was providing on a mid-April afternoon. The first flowers of spring are usually ones like the crocus and the daffodils, this year arriving just in time for Easter. The weather gave nice light and reflectance to the little flower and the water drops didn't hurt either. Now I don't mind a little rain, but because of the eventual downpour, I only got about a dozen shots before I had to call it quits. With my shoot cut short I went inside and loaded my images in Lightroom. I selected several and outputted them and then opened them in Photoshop for further processing. Here, I boosted the contrast a little and basically told Photoshop to make the already darkish background darker. Then I gave the image a slight bump in saturation, knowing that for some reason the contrast and saturation somehow flatten when they get posted to these blogs. The image was shot at 500 ISO f4.5 at 1/500 of a second. Because the depth of field is pretty shallow, the plane that you are on and the plane the subject is on are critical to create what part of the image is in focus. In other words, to get both the top and the bottom of the flower in focus, the back of the camera has to be parallel to that plane. Moving your camera askew changes significantly the outcome of your image. Speaking of changes, later that day it actually got sunny and made it to 66 degrees. But that was yesterday, and then this morning there was hail. And you know what they say, April's hail brings May's... holy grail???
Andre - I really love this one:) I've got one that I took this spring that is somewhat like this, but nowhere near as fab:) D
Posted by: D | Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 01:43 PM