Guy Davies, EPSA
About the Image(s)
I thought a nice bright sunny image might help to cheer us all up in these rather bleak times. This was taken in a poppy field in Tuscany in early May 2016 on a very bright sunny morning. I noticed that this flower was standing out from all the others and was at the edge of the field. Camera was my Nikon D7100 with the Nikon 70-300 lens at 300mm. Exposure was 1/640 at f/5.6 and ISO 200. I did nothing with it until recently when I was looking for an image to enter in a camera club competition for the set subject of Flora, and came across this one in my archives. I opened it in Photoshop and applied Topaz Sharpen AI at the Auto setting. Then I set to work to clone out edge distractions and tone down some others. After that I used some Curves layers and a Levels layer to brighten the main flower and tone down the background. Finally I merged all to a new layer and applied Unsharp Mask at a large radius and small amount, limiting the effect to the red petals of the main flower plus some on the out of focus poppy head at the lower right. It didn’t get anywhere in the competition after all that, but I still like it.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
7 comments posted
Mission accomplished nothing but howling winds and dark grey overcast skies in this part of the Kingdom so a bright sunny picture of a glowing poppy is a real tonic for the months ahead.
I must say I always take time to study a picture carefully but the power of the red just held my attention and the out of focus green background so compliment one another I had'nt noticed the lower right corner until Isaac mentioned it had a glance and was attracted straight back to the main subject,like both the original image and Isaacs crop,thanks for the tonic Guy.   Posted: 02/12/2021 14:51:51