Flower Power Thread

GardenersHelper

GardenersHelper

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Nick
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Yes
Inspired by Quicksnapper and Lez325 in this thread, how about we have a thread where those of us who are interested in such things can share and discuss some close-ups/macros of flowers, buds, berries, foliage etc?

Or perhaps you would prefer to stick with individual threads. No way of knowing. I'll start this off and lets see if it flies, stumbles or sinks. Then we'll know. :)

(For 1100 pixel high versions click on an image then right click and select "Original")

Here is a shot of an Aquilegia I captured in May last year with my SX240is point and shoot.

ISO 200, f/8, 1/500 sec, hand held, available light, Av with exposure compensation -1EV
(Note for dSLR users. f/8 is the smallest aperture available on the point and shoot and bridge cameras with 6mm wide sensors that I use and is roughly equivalent to using f/22 on an APS-C camera in terms of depth of field and detail loss because of diffraction.)

0506 1 IMG_1295-Edit PS1 PSS3.35 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


And here is another shot of an Aquilegia, this one captured in February 2008 with my (now deceased) 6 megapixel Canon S3is bridge camera.

ISO (unknown, but probably) 100, f/8, 1/8 sec, tripod, available light, Av with no exposure compensation. These plants are rather small at this stage in their lives and so this shot probably used an achromat (add-on close-up lens), most likely a Raynox 150 or Canon 500D.

0506 3a 6.7 IMG_5729 PS1-Edit PS1 PSS3.28 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
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Both beautiful shots Nick especially like the second one with the water drops
I would personally have gone for a wider aperture on the first one to blur the background but you wouldn't have got all of the flowers in focus:)
 
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Well ... thank you for saying my thread inspired you, Nick. Under the circumstances, the very least I can do is post a flower pic or two. Here's one to be going on with, but plenty more where that cam from ...



In the garden 2 by NittyNattyNora, on Flickr
 
LCPete said:
Both beautiful shots Nick especially like the second one with the water drops
Click to expand...

Thanks Pete.

LCPete said:
I would personally have gone for a wider aperture on the first one to blur the background but you wouldn't have got all of the flowers in focus:)
Click to expand...

I think this is going to be a recurring theme! "but you wouldn't have got all of the flowers in focus" - quite so. :)

And actually, there is another aspect to this. You know I like to get as much of my subjects in focus as I can. Up to now we have generally been talking about invertebrates, but the same thing holds, although to a lesser extent, for flowers, as long as that doesn't leave the background too disruptive. However, I think I may actually prefer to have a bit more substance in my backgrounds than most people, at least sometimes; it does depend on the particulars of the image of course in terms of the distribution of light, colours and shapes in the background in relation to the subject and foreground.

There is something similar with noise. I don't like any colour noise to be visible in my images at the intended viewing size/distance, but there is a certain level of luminance noise in plain areas of backgrounds that works well for my eyes. If those areas are too completely smooth/featureless they can sometimes look "plasticy" to me; and obviously at the other extreme if they are too noisy they do look ugly. The level of noise I'm thinking of is almost imperceptible, but there if you look closely. It is, perhaps, almost a subliminal effect. In fact, perhaps it is subliminal sometimes, something that your eye/brain registers without you being consciously aware of it.
 
Very good point about the backgrounds I used to try to get an absolutely plain green background if ts was possible
I now think that can look unnatural and try as you say to get a bit of substance in the background but still blurred:)
If i get a bit lucky with the colours it can really show off the subject
 
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Quicksnapper said:
Here's one to be going on with
Click to expand...

Nice. I like the dof effect of the small f/16 aperture. Is that the very tasty Canon 100mm macro you're using?

Fascinating how the drops are hanging on at such a steep angle on some of the petals.

It looks great; natural looking colours, good clarity and the subject standing out well against the background. And the -2/3 exposure compensation working well to retain information in the the bright areas.

If I were to explore any changes, I might see what the effect was of bringing (the highest) highlights down just a little, to see if the drops on the three white areas would become a little more visible. It would be a pretty marginal change, completely insignificant perhaps, and there might (depending on personal taste) be too much of a price to pay in terms of a slight greying effect on the whiteness of those areas. Tradeoffs, and preferences - as always.

EDIT: And I forgot to say that it's fascinating to see how well the image holds up under close inspection of the full size version you have over at Flickr. I'm afraid you won't ever see anything that large from me because my small-sensor stuff isn't pleasant at that size.

Quicksnapper said:
plenty more where that cam from ...
Click to expand...

Excellent! Yes, more please.
 
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LCPete said:
Very good point about the backgrounds I used to try to get an absolutely plain green background if ts was possible
I now think that can look unnatural and try as you say to get a bit of substance in the background but still blurred:)
Click to expand...

Fine, but be sure to settle on what you are comfortable with Pete. :)

LCPete said:
If i get a bit lucky with the colours it can really show off the subject
Click to expand...

Not half. It's great when that happens - and you spot it. I find it sometimes it needs a bit of a crop or some rebalancing of the light to help it along. I thought there was an example of that with the second crop I offered in Vicky's rather nice Closer to Nature thread, where I thought the crop made more of the shapes and colours radiating outward in the background in the top right quadrant of the image, shapes and colours which I thought complemented the subject rather pleasingly.
 
Judi said:
Here are a couple from me too
Click to expand...

Excellent! Delicate petal colours and textures in both, and lovely clarity and colours of the anthers.

Very nicely controlled use of flash for the apple blossom. Did you use some negative flash exposure compensation?

(To my eye) nice uncluttered composition of the apple blossom (although I would be inclined to clone out or crop off the triangular intrusion half way up the right hand edge :)).
 
Yes i see the triangular thingy Nick, I will have to have a go at that, to be honest i can't remember exactly what the flash settings were, but for fill in I usually have my on camera flash at 1/3rd power .
Thank you for your comments:):)

BTW I love your #2 :clap::clap:
 
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Judi said:
to be honest i can't remember exactly what the flash settings were, but for fill in I usually have my on camera flash at 1/3rd power .
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Ah, right, you're using a different approach to setting the flash power. Same effect though, and works nicely.

Judi said:
Thank you for your comments:):)
Click to expand...

It's a pleasure. Especially so with flowers etc.

Judi said:
BTW I love your #2 :clap::clap:
Click to expand...

Thanks. :)
 
Thanks for the encouraging reply, Nick. Here's another one of the same flower from a different - possibly more interesting - angle. This was after a heavy rain shower and these iris grow in my garden pond. Nice when you don't have to go far to get a few half decent shots. Yes ...its the Canon 100m Macro I use for these ... my favourite lens if I'm honest. Also does very good portraits ...


WaterIris2 by NittyNattyNora, on Flickr
 
Quicksnapper said:
Here's another one of the same flower from a different - possibly more interesting - angle.
Click to expand...

ooh, I like that a lot. Great angle and crop.

Suggestions? None. Everything there works just fine for my tastes. :)

Quicksnapper said:
This was after a heavy rain shower and these iris grow in my garden pond. Nice when you don't have to go far to get a few half decent shots.
Click to expand...

Absolutely. My wife is a very keen gardener; most of my flower etc shots are captured in our garden.

Quicksnapper said:
Yes ...its the Canon 100m Macro I use for these ... my favourite lens if I'm honest.
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised. :)
 
GardenersHelper said:
Inspired by Quicksnapper and Lez325 in this thread, how about we have a thread where those of us who are interested in such things can share and discuss some close-ups/macros of flowers, buds, berries, foliage etc?

Or perhaps you would prefer to stick with individual threads. No way of knowing. I'll start this off and lets see if it flies, stumbles or sinks. Then we'll know. :)

(For 1100 pixel high versions click on an image then right click and select "Original")

Here is a shot of an Aquilegia I captured in May last year with my SX240is point and shoot.

ISO 200, f/8, 1/500 sec, hand held, available light, Av with exposure compensation -1EV
(Note for dSLR users. f/8 is the smallest aperture available on the point and shoot and bridge cameras with 6mm wide sensors that I use and is roughly equivalent to using f/22 on an APS-C camera in terms of depth of field and detail loss because of diffraction.)

0506 1 IMG_1295-Edit PS1 PSS3.35 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


And here is another shot of an Aquilegia, this one captured in February 2008 with my (now deceased) 6 megapixel Canon S3is bridge camera.

ISO (unknown, but probably) 100, f/8, 1/8 sec, tripod, available light, Av with no exposure compensation. These plants are rather small at this stage in their lives and so this shot probably used an achromat (add-on close-up lens), most likely a Raynox 150 or Canon 500D.

0506 3a 6.7 IMG_5729 PS1-Edit PS1 PSS3.28 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
Click to expand...

Love the second image with the water droplets
 
minnnt said:
Hi Nick, nice idea for a thread, i like it!

Here's a few of mine. :)
Click to expand...

Oh, the first one is beautiful. I love the colours, the light, the composition.

Nit-picking, I might have fiddled a bit with the left hand and bottom edges. I wonder if there was a framing that would would have included just a bit more on the left to show the full width of the flower half way up on the left and the tip of the oof flower/bud in the background towards the bottom on the left? I would have been inclined to clone out the little bit of red flower/bud showing along the bottom about a third of the way along.

The square crop works nicely for me in #2. But are those sharpening halos I see around the edges of several of the anthers and around the top of the stigma?

Lovely composition in #3. Do you think a slightly smaller aperture might have drawn the droplets on the right hand petals and the stigma into the depth of field? If it did, would that seem like a good thing to you? It would of course bring the unopened bud a bit more into focus, but it's in a somewhat intermediate state anyway so I don't know how much difference that would make. Here are a pair of images of mine which illustrate this. As it happens, my preference is for the second one, taken with a smaller aperture and with larger dof and more definition in the further away droplets, the bud and the background. But tastes differ of course. :)

ISO 400, f/11, 1/40 sec

0457 16 2012_11_08 P1720535-Edit NoLuSh34,3,3PSS2.43 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

ISO 400, f/22, 1/4 sec

0457 18 2012_11_08 P1720539-Edit NoLuSh34.3.3PSS2.43 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
Here's an old one of mine to throw in the mix :)

c2cf8c7d92f9d80ac703b871a9f06b5f-d208qwo.jpg
 
Some really nice images in this thread.
I confess to knowing more about weeds, than i do about flowers/plants!! So I rarely shoot any flower pics. I only have a couple of images to add.

Each year, in the Spring, I visit a couple of wooded areas, my targets being both Snakes and Butterflies. At a certain time of Spring, the woodland floor is covered in Wood Anemone, most of these lovely flowers are white in colour. But other colours do occur from time to time. Last year, amongst the white, i found a small cluster of Violet Anemone.


Violet coloured Wood Anemone. 3rd-May-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr

The other pic to add is this one. A mating pair of Adonis Blues, on top of a Man Orchid.
Confession - I found the Adonis Blues mating on the ground(within inches of the Orchid) so i very carefully placed the pair onto the Orchid, where they remained together for some time, then they slowly worked their way down the Orchid, back to where i found them, then parted, and went their separate ways.


Mating Adonis Blue butterflies, on an Orchid. 8th-June-2013 by Testudo Man, on Flickr
 
One of the things I'm enjoying about this thread is that seeing, enjoying, thinking about and writing about other people's flower images is encouraging me to look back at some of the flower pictures I have captured over the past seven years or so. And while doing that I have noticed how much my post processing has changed in that time. Here are a couple that I was specifically looking for to repost here, but when I eventually found them I decided to reprocess them rather than just posting them as I had originally processed them four years ago.

So, two images of shrivelled Hypericum berries, captured in mid February 2010 with a Canon SX10is bridge camera, and reprocessed with a different eye and techniques this evening.

ISO 80, f/8, 1/15 sec, natural light

0265 2010_02_16 2.7 IMG_8488 Hypericum Edit3 PS1 PSS3.75 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr

ISO 80, f/8, 1/5 sec, natural light

0265 2010_02_16 2.8 IMG_8509 Hypericum Edit2-Edit PS1 PSS3.75 by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
Closeup taken at RHS Wisley
 
Inspired by Vicky, here's a wild Marsh Orchid I shot last summer. Complete - if you can see them - with little bugs ...

PS - if I post any more pics, I'll have to get away from purple!!


MarshOrchid4 by NittyNattyNora, on Flickr
 
I went out today with the camera to see what i could find flower wise, I came across some snowdrops but trying to find some that were clean and free from leaf clutter and doggy's toilet mess. Was just a little tricky, any way i have ended up with what i can say is one ok looking shot. The image was taken on my 600D with 18-55 kits lens with my raynox 150 attached.


Snowdrop by pinkbikerbabe 1, on Flickr
 
A burst of colour
 
I like this thread :)
 
Excellent thread Nick so well done for starting it (y)

Hope to get some images up & on my 'To Do' list. Meanwhile I have subscribed & will read with interest :)
 
Judi, I'm pretty sure that's a Sempervivum of some sort or another. As for the exact species and variety, blind doe (no eye deer...) I'm afraid!

Pretty sure we all know about the same amount about these. They're Snowdrops but I don't know which variety. There are loads of them out down at the Dartmoor Zoological Park at the moment and the daffs aren't too far behind. Is spring on its way at last?!
V1, 18-200VR @ 34mm (EFL [35mm] 91mm). ISO 200, 1/400th @ f/9. Centre weighted average metering with no compensation.


DSC_0142 by gpn63, on Flickr
 
Thanks all for keeping this going so nicely.

Judi, I'm afraid I'm pretty useless at identifying things. The only reason I can sometimes name a plant I've photographed is because my wife has told me what it is! (Or rather, told me yet again, because by and large I can't retain the names of things no matter how many times I'm told; a lifelong problem.)

I'm a bit preoccupied with other stuff at the moment but I'll try to comment and post some more here. For now, here are some I have to hand. We have some hellebores in flower at the moment, and I took a few pictures (in rather wet and windy conditions) when one of them was in bud in mid January, and again (windy again) about a week later when it was starting to flower. Here are some pictures from those two days. (I do have some more, from this plant and a couple of other hellebores with flowers wider open, and a handful of other flowers, on a calmer day a week ago, but I haven't looked at them yet and I'm afraid I don't know when I'll get round to them.)

(Larger versions over at Flickr as usual.)


0518 04 2014_01_19 P1170229-Edit PS1 PSS3.63 - Edit Ex by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0518 05 2014_01_19 P1170206-Edit-2-Edit PS1a PSS3.86 - Edit Ex Cl by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0518 06 2014_01_19 P1170219-Edit-3 PS1 PSS3.63 - Edit Ex by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0520 1 2014_01_25 P1180255-Edit PS1 PSS3.86 - Edit5 WB by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0520 2 2014_01_25 P1180264-Edit PS1b ClPSS3.63 Cl - Edit4 WB by gardenersassistant, on Flickr


0520 4 2014_01_25 P1180291-Edit PS1a ClPSS3.63 Cl - Edit WB by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
 
Hi Judi, you've got an Aeonium arboreum 'Atropurpureum'. It's tender so whilst it can go outside in the summer, cold weather may kill it in the winter, so protect it from frost, or bring it inside.

Regards

Nick
 
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