This year, I will be different, said me for many years! Then, I realized as I am getting wiser with age, that I can not be different than who I am. I am made up of my experiences, my emotions, my trials and tribulations and why would I want to be different? So, I will work on getting better experiences, surround myself with people that inspire me, love me, support me and I will try to give love, and support to people around me. No lofty goals!
Here is today’s lesson (learnt all by myself).
I had the great fortune to conduct a workshop along with Jackie Kramer last year in Oregon photographing dahlias, lotuses, roses and many many other flowers. Today, I have decided to work on one particular image that’s tugging at my heart! Here is the original with absolutely no adjustments. Shot with Sony 90mm macro, ISO 640, F2.8, 1/80th sec.
I was not really happy with it. But somehow this rose kept calling my name. For years, my tradition was to photograph sunrise every New Year day and this year, I decided to watch it from my hotel balcony and take it in and surrender myself to the surroundings. (In myrtle Beach, watching the sun rise over the ocean sitting in my pajamas)!! Then inspiration strikes me to process it. I used Exposure software to work on this and just playing with the filters, I stumbled upon this one preset that blew my mind away. I cropped a bit, sharpened and such after the filter is applied!
Then I felt bad about changing the color of the rose altogether so I went back to the original and this time, I duplicated the layer in PS, using Exposure software’s bokeh settings, created a blurred background. Using blend modes, I brought back the center of the rose into the blurred layer. Sharpened a little and finished off with NIK pastel preset at 20% opacity. Here is the end result!
Let me know what your thoughts are. If you want to learn how I experiment with my floral images, I do offer one on one mentoring online to introduce you to various techniques that I employ!