How Would You Adjust this?

[jeeperspeepers]

Any suggestions on enriching/cropping...etc this shot? I was just going to delete it, but thought I might ask for some suggestions.



Camera: Canon EOS 50D
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture: f/4.5
Focal Length: 105 mm
ISO Speed: 2000
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

[PrimeTime]

Hi vicki, that is a strange looking plant. Very colorful.

A couple of things that are hurting the image : the lens flare in the background, and you cut one of the branches of the plant off on the right. Perhaps shooting at a different time of day , or even a long exposure towards dark would give a better result. You could also insert a black poster board or something to block out the brightness of the background and really make the plant pop.

The first thing i do when editing is adjust the white balance (which it looked ok in this image). Next i adjust the levels. Bring up the levels tool, and move the black slider a little to the right and the midrange a little to the right also and you will see a huge improvement.(what you want to do is slide the black and white slider all the way up to the edge of the histogram, and then adjust the midrange to your liking. This image was ok on the white slider, so you only need to adjust the blacks and mids.)

To get a little more enhancement , do a small scale contrast adjustment............use the unsharp mask filter and choose a large radius and a small amount. (some where around radius 30 and amount .3 will be close. Every image is different, and you have to zoom in and try different radius to see what one works best. )

You could also add a little saturation to the yellow and red to further enhance.

Adding a vignette may also help.

[jeeperspeepers]

Thank you...I will try your suggestions. (I also need to apologize..I put this under "Wildlife" instead of "Landscape"..I get the Homer Simpson "doht" award for that one!) The plant is in our Rainforest display (I think it is a type of 'bird of paradise' but I could be wrong.