Tag: Flower

One Photo Focus November

It's time for the November One Photo Focus challenge. This month's image is provided courtesy of Julie Powell. Be sure to visit Stacy’s page to see each participant's edit of this image.

Original image © Julie Powell
Original image © Julie Powell

The first thing I did after importing this image to Adobe Lightroom was adjusted the vertical perspective. To me, the original image seemed titled. I used the Guided tool and aligned based on the cardboard box on the right-hand side. The adjustment was -4.8, and I enabled constrain crop while I worked on it.

I then applied lens correction to remove any chromatic aberrations and enabled profile corrections and applied the default, cropped the image to remove the box and the light source from the frame and sat back to consider my next steps.

I messed around with a few filter presets before settling on this one. It's a Wet Plate preset called Chocolate Shadows. I don't remember where I found the preset, but I like how it darkened the shadows including the distracting background and floor.

Original image © Julie Powell, edited by Khürt Williams
Original image © Julie Powell, edited by Khürt Williams

What do you think?

Spider on Yellow

Spider on Yellow was created whole practicing the so-called Brenizer panorama method. I am not too happy with the results. I think the technique works best on portraits of people. Maybe I'll convince my wife or daughter to model for me.

The difficulty for me was in maintaining a stable subject distance while hand holding my Nikon. Also, the flower was moving slightly in the wind.

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Spider on Yellow
Can you find the spider?
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The image below is the Brenizer image I created.

A Brenizer panorama created in Photoshop using 16 images.
A Brenizer panorama created in Photoshop using 16 images.
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Old-Fashioned Bleeding Hearts

Photowalks are my main method for connecting to world-wide photography community. I started participating a few years ago. At first I was a bit nervous. I was concerned that my low-budget Nikon D40 and my rudimentary knowledge would make me seem like a n00b1. But I soon found photowalks were typically organized by someone with a passion for photography. Like me, these people -- amateurs and professionals alike -- loved photography and didn't care much gear. The people I met on these photo-walks were there to learn and to share. Not to glare.

This image of dicentra spectabilis, commonly known as Bleeding Hearts, was taken at the Sayen Gardens in Hamilton, New Jersey during a photowalk with the Mercer County Photography Club. I was the organizer for this walk. We had a small turnout but everyone was enthusiastic.

So what is the Sayen Garden?

Situated in historic Hamilton Square, Sayen House and Gardens provide a welcome sanctuary for nature lovers, garden enthusiasts and history buffs alike.Sayen Gardens

The air was cool and moist. Someone remembered seeing a pond on the last trip to the gardens so we walked around trying to find it. It was like a treasure hunt but we made sure to stop and enjoy the journey. I found these Bleeding Hearts while walking along one of the paths. It was early spring and I found the foliage with arching stems of delicate, heart-shaped flowers, attractive.

In some ways, the walk through Sayen Gardens reminded me of the many childhood walks through the Kingstown botanical Gardens with my mother and brothers. During the rainy season in St. Vincent the air is always moist and "sweet". A mixture of the rainwater from the mountains and the salt water from the Atlantic Ocean.

  1. Quite frankly I was. ↩