Light box everlasting magic

[photo]

Hi! First of all the flowers seem a little bit out of focus, and washed out. Maybe if you increase shadows darken highlights or add contrast it would look better. I would keep the composition the same though. If you make those changes, a lot of them you can do in photoshop, (all except the focus), the image will turn out very nice. Hope my suggestions helped you (I am not an expert, just started the hobby a little less than a year ago.

Photo-

You don't take a photo, you create art

[mwanafunzi]

I have to agree with the comment about bring out some of the details. At the moment the image looks quite flat.

[Before post processing] maybe you could change the position from which you took the shot.

[SriMesh]

I, too, am just a beginner, but photography has been fun. IMHO, your capture is very beautiful and very artistically balanced, and it is a wonderful start for just obtaining your light room! It was a unique idea to capture the everlasting flowers and in the drying state, upside down, out of the ordinary and really grabs one's attention.

I inverted the colours, and see that the brightest colours ("Our eyes instinctually find light, bright areas"), is actually the entire upper right background area, and not the flowers at all. The histogram is nicely balanced with the dark areas which happen to fall in about the same ratio in the left lower corner, and midtones diagonally through the center acrosswise... upper right and lower left. For rule of thirds, the eyes surround the upper largest flower open to the viewer, the lower thirds divide between the cluster of flowers on the left, and the single flower on the right. In the composition adjuster, the flower arrangement best suits the golden spiral arrangement, but then it is the cluster of flowers at the lower left as the focal point and not the bright area nor the largest flower open to the viewer. Your logo, placed where it is in the first area the viewer looks into, actually helps the viewer come up and around the bright area, and use the stem lines to go around and back done following the petals out of the image. The one petal pointing up through the bottom of the light source helps to complete the circle, but stops the eye from the bottom. But it is so beautiful, that one makes the circle a few times around the flowers. The other wonderful thing which highlights the flowers is the blue background which is a contrasting colour to the yellow in the flowers in hue and value. Because you were brave to use a number of blooms, you do have foreground, middle ground and back ground, as the flowers tend to be in front of each other to create the depth of field

Can you, in the light box, arrange your camera to allow a flower to be in front of your light source, as you would put a bright afternoon sun behind a tree to allow the glow to provide backlight, but not take away from the scene with the glow of the sun. That way the light would work as a vignette or halo effect, accenting whichever flower you want to draw the viewer's eyes toward.

Thank you for the opportunity to ramble, and to view your creation! I now need to have a peek at life images by Jill's blogspot

[Jill H]

Originally Posted by SriMesh

I, too, am just a beginner, but photography has been fun. IMHO, your capture is very beautiful and very artistically balanced, and it is a wonderful start for just obtaining your light room! It was a unique idea to capture the everlasting flowers and in the drying state, upside down, out of the ordinary and really grabs one's attention.

Thank you everyone for your very valid comments - which I have taken on board.

Thank you especially SriMesh for your very detailed analysis of my photo. I found it very enlightening, and much food for thought indeed. I hope very soon to have more time to play with my light box (unfortunately work constrains at the moment does to help) and I will be doing lots more - as it really is an area that I am very interested in.

I particularly like the work of Floranova, which has been the basis of my current inspiration - see here - ::: F L O R A N O V A ::::

Thanks everyone again. I very much appreciate you looking and and taking the time to comment. And I hope SriMesh that you enjoyed "Life Images by Jill"

[SriMesh]

Jill, I really enjoyed looking at your web site, I will have to return, as it has a lot of interesting content, too much for one visit. You have initiated a wonderful webpage which shows the directions you are taking an it looks awesome. Thank you for mentioning the ::: F L O R A N O V A :::: page. The images there are soft focus, yet focused, dramatic, romantic and dreamy and really capture the delicate essence of the flower, the petals. Even the thicker plants, which one would not usually think of as semi transparent, they still have a translucent quality about them as well. Looking at the photos there does not look to be any soft focus lens, diffusion material, the DIY vaseline smeared on any filters, nylon, cellophane or cling wrap punctured with holes, flash gel covers, adding extension tubes to lens and shooting with shallow depth of field, PP by using an inverted High Pass filter on a duplicate layer and then blending or any Orton effects being done. Warwick Orme just appears to be lighting and camera positioning to capture the most often subtle lighting through the petals of the flowers. It is almost like the portraits I have seen done by others using "high-key soft focus portrait photography" where there is an image under lots and lots of light, however the image is not underexposed too dark with backlighting or overexposed with front lighting but rather the subject is bathed in light which eliminates shadows. It was also interesting that Orme used the same white (light) backgrounds also preferred by High key portraiture. I do see a lot of these qualities coming out in your work at Life Images By Jill. It is such a unique or refreshing look at flowers, when a lot of flower photography places a richly coloured flower on a black background to make it pop, this technique enhances the dramatic light of whites and light coloured flowers and their essence and their delicateness. Now I am rambling again. Best wishes again, and thank you for mentioning the ::: F L O R A N O V A :::: web site.

[Jill H]

Thanks again SriMesh for your comments and for looking at my blog. My flower work is usually "in situ" and I am particularly drawn to roses and Australian wildflowers of which we have an enormous abundance of varieties here in Western Australia.

I am glad you found Avonova's work interesting. When I get a chance I am going to add a light box album to my page, for some pics. I shared a few in the previous "share your shots forum" between Christmas and New Year. I am certainly going to be working more along this line, so thank you so much for your comments. You appear to have a log of experience - are you working in photography?

In the meantime, here is another from my "everlasting" series. I really wanted to capture there soft delicateness. I have some others on coloured backdrops, but I really want to experiment with the light coming through as in Avonova's work. I haven't used any pp work on these, I experimented with sharpening and colour adjustments, but really wasn't happy with the result - preferring the original photo - I found it was closer to the image I wanted.

From Life Images by Jill

[SriMesh]

This new picture, is very beautiful, I think I like it a bit better than your first you submitted on this thread if that is possible, as they are both wonderful . I am learning about photography, and enjoying it immensely. I love capturing flowers, and close ups, I think better than landscapes, but I am still placing myself on assignments to explore different ways of seeing, and photographing. I hope to get a portfolio of photos assembled together somewhere online...soon.... I also want to get to Australia some day, you make it look very beautiful!

[Jill H]

I enjoy closeups and landscapes too - although I think the closeups win over. If you want to see some more of Western Australia you can hook into my 52 week tour of Western Australia in SYS Projects threads.

Thanks again SriMesh and everyone who took the time to look and comment - I really do appreciate your comments. Thanks!