About the Image(s)

This month I am trying a totally different take on doing a tonal blend. The plant was in the shade with an occasional hit of sunlight as the leaves above moved in the breeze. It was enough to give me a differential between the subject and the background but not to give good dimensional definition to the flowers. Enter the third exposure using a flash to put the light where I wanted it. Base exposures Canon 7D and 70-200 F2.8 lens at 180 mm and F 16, 1/40, iso 400. Second exposure the same but at 1/80th. Third exposure was with the flash also at 1/80th. Raw processing was in ACR with emphasis on the background in the darker version and the flower in the other base exposure and the flashed version. The three images were aligned and then the light and dark exposures were manually blended using an intersection of a selection and a luminosity mask. The flash version was then blended into the combined shot using a mask and blend mode. Cropped to what you see and sharpened.