Joan Funk
July 2025 - Profile of Sunflower
Original
About the Image(s)
I captured this image with my iPhone 15 Pro at the Sunny Point Cafe in Asheville, NC. I was happy to get a side view of the flower.
The iPhone set the picture (I didn't set it myself, of course) at 1/2100 sec, f/2.8, ISO 25, 9mm. I cropped it in Lightroom and adjusted the shadows (and whites and blacks) significantly. I brightened the yellow in the flower and the greens in the leaves with the Lightroom luminosity slider. I added a little texture, and a border in Topaz Adjust 5. I hope the photo brightens your day.
5 comments posted
Nice image, it certainly needed brightening up but I feel it has gone a little too far in that regard. The leaf in front of the flower is somewhat distracting & I think I would have prefered the image to show more of the flower face. Posted: 07/19/2025 09:29:02
You weren't too far from where I live! Nice job recovering the sunflower in shadow during post-processing. That said, the overall composition feels a bit busy to me. Posted: 07/19/2025 21:51:50
Joan, I LOVE sunflowers! I do agree that this one is quite busy however taking it from the back gives us a new perspective of their whimsical beauty. I think for me, the biggest detractor are the two leaves that are totally horizontal. I tried to use Puppet Warp to get them to fit more with the whimsy of the flower and ruffled back. I also used ON1 to lessen the noise and then cropped a bit. Posted: 07/22/2025 00:24:01
Nice shot. Your post processing is good. To me, the brightening can be a little less. I tried a little level adjustment and vibrance to your processed image. The resulting image is given below. Posted: 07/25/2025 07:46:26
My thanks to all of you for your helpful comments. With your help, I can now make this a better image. Posted: 07/26/2025 00:38:50