orange flowers

Last spring I posted photos from the Ottawa Tulip Festival at Dow’s Lake. The tulips were a bit late so they were not fully opened and I promised at the time to revisit. But stuff happens and I took an unscheduled break. This post is a teaser from a second visit that I will post soon. (Hopefully no unscheduled breaks…fingers crossed.) I thought I would post this grouping separately and hopefully leave you wanting more. I don’t usually do this when processing a picture but I thought I’d share and get your thoughts. These tulips are quite spectacular but the original composition wasn’t working for me. So I decided to crop the image. I soon realized that I might salvage two separate compositions from the original. Make no mistake, when I compose a shot, I try to fill the frame with only one composition. I duplicated the original and cropped what I considered to be two working arrangements.

Again the first image is my favourite, the second is the original and the last is the second or remaining composition. Do you have a favourite or do they both work?

The weather was hot and sunny the day we visited Whitehouse Perennials, so I used a diffusion filter to soften the harsh sunlight and shadows. This first image was taken without a diffuser and has a lot contrast as a result. The colour is beautiful and I like the more uniform darker background. In the end I was glad to have this image because it helped to process the softer diffused images.

The second image was taken at f5.6 and I used a diffuser to filter harsh afternoon sun. The result was a much softer image with much less contrast. I had to increase my blacks substantially to get the rich colour back. I noticed that even though I was on my tripod, there was still movement of the camera. The details of the flower and especially the stamen are less sharply focused. Also with a lighter background, the stem on the left side of the image became an unwelcome distraction.

This last image is what I consider my finished image. This was taken at f8 which has more of the details of the flower in focus and the background is still nicely blurred. My composition has 2 problems, the stem on the right side and the buds in the bottom right corner. I should have moved these out of my frame while shooting but in my defence, I had my hands full holding the diffuser and taking the shot. So I cropped and cloned out my problem areas and this is the result.

The diffused images should be better but I’m conflicted here. My husband likes the first image without a diffuser best. What do you think? Click on the images to enlarge for better viewing and comparison. 🙂

Beth Walsh photography

A Place to Share my Work

A Tulip Festival Teaser – 2014

Before and After Diffusion