white lily

[ellie mac]

There have been so many great flower photographs on here lately that it inspired me to give it a try when these blooms unfurled in my front yard.





Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 200


I'd be really interested in what I can do to improve this shot. The flowers are in a place that has full shade for the majority of the day, with about 20minutes of full sun mid morning, so no nice soft glowing afternoon light etc. In full sun the detail of the petal is lost because of the brightness of the white, in full shade I should be able to get the detail but obviously a bit dull. There are a few more examples on flickr if anyone has time to have a look.
Any tips for taking good photos of large white flowers in this type of situation?

I'm hoping to go out in the next couple of days to try again without a two year old in tow so any suggestions would be appreciated.

[jiminyClickit]

ellie mac,

Poster board, foam core board, something big, flat and white might be positioned in sunlight to reflect onto these blooms enough to dispel the grayness. That will help some, and if you will try to leave room around each flower in your viewfinder, it gives a better look and leaves you with options if you want to crop later.

[PLouie]

I'd recommend a contrast adjustment. Use levels or curves.

[Arvid]

Ellie, beautiful flowers! Another point not mentioned is background which will either make or ruin a photo. The vertical lines and the bright white points of light in the lower left do distract from the flowers. These can be either erased in a PP program or eliminated at the start with black or dark colored paper placed behind the flowers.

[BattalionFive]

Beautiful flowers! Have you read about the "bucket method"? That might be an easy way for you to get a better background in the picture. Of course you could go the super easy route and move yourself and the camera around until you get a suitable background.
I was taking some flower pictures today, and when I downloaded them I was dissapointed that the background was far too distracting. I suppose we get too focused on the subject and forget the extraneous distractions sometimes.
Good job otherwise.

[Nai no Kami]

Originally Posted by Arvid

Ellie, beautiful flowers! Another point not mentioned is background which will either make or ruin a photo. The vertical lines and the bright white points of light in the lower left do distract from the flowers. These can be either erased in a PP program or eliminated at the start with black or dark colored paper placed behind the flowers.

While I think that the background is not that distracting, this is what levels and curves adjustments (plus some unsharp mask) did:

[jiminyClickit]

ellie mac,

While your posted lily has some good attributes, I found that this single view of yours (white lily #5) on Flickr (which appeared to be overexposed) was a better shot. Both can be very good photos with a little work, and hopefully you can see the possibilities for future shots.

[peeperita]

dear ellie....

i can appreciate jiminy's remarks about now to better illuminate your subject......i am a mediocre at best photographer and most of what i can do is in the digital darkroom....so, when i have failed myself at the onset, the post production often saves the shot.....
nai and i are on the same path with the pp.....i also adjusted the levels and usm...and then i duplicated the layer and burned out the distractions on the darker side of the image...the duplicate is then changed to the multiplying blend mode and reduced to around 60% opacity.....

this is what i came up with..



i sure hope this helps

peeper

[ellie mac]

Thank you all for taking the time to have a look at this & special thanks to those who took the time to do a bit of work on these. I can see that I really need to start upgrading my pp skills as well as working on getting things right in the first place!

As many of you noted I really had a lot of trouble with the background of these shots, I did wish at the time that the plant was in a more attractive part of the garden! I also had trouble with getting up high enough to allow for some room around the flower, I'm pretty short & these are pretty tall - next time I will get the step ladder out I think for the shots looking down. So both of those contributed to the tight in-camera cropping - something I have a tendancy for anyway.

Jiminy - that really looks so much better, I've never attempted that type of adjustment in pp before, I'll have to see if I can find a couple of good tutorials to help me figure out how it's done. Will also get myself something to use to reflect light when needed, I guess in this particular case I could also wait for a day that is more overcast so when the flower is in sun the light is more diffuse.

Peeperita & Nai no Kami, thanks for the demonstration of what some adjustments to levels, curves etc can do for my image. Again something that I haven't really used for pp yet - clearly I need to set aside time to have another look at this image and see what I can do with it myself.