fall montage

[DanK]

I think the one in the middle may be an echinacea, but I have forgotten what the others are. I was thinking of cropping from the bottom to get a more typical aspect ratio, but on the other hand, it is nice to see the lines converge. C&C welcome, of course.

9 images, stacked with Zerene DMap.

[Shadowman]

Nice concept and composition.

[Mike Buckley]

Nice clarity! Did you consider positioning the stem on the right to allow space between the blossoms at the center and on the right?

[bnnrcn]

Lovely image, IMO a square crop wouldn't look bad either

[IzzieK]

Hmmm...I like this one in portrait better, Binnur and cropping from the bottom will not look right and seems to separate them more, whereas as is, there appears to be a connection at the bottom...I am wondering if you have Perfect Suite, you can do a masking and move the right one a little bit to the RHS to balance the distance to the centre weed...this can be done in Photoshop too with the warp tool (?) I think...but it is just easier with Perfect Suite...for me that is...

...and why are we talking about weeds so early in the morning?

[Geoff F]

I don't see any problem with a crop from the bottom, Dan.

The stems are obviously strongly converging so it doesn't really matter if they don't actually meet together. It would be different if they were straighter near the top so a crop would then spoil the effect.

[DanK]

Thanks, all. For fun, here it is cropped to a standard 8 x 10 aspect ratio. I think I like it better this way.

[bnnrcn]

Crop looks better Dan

[Signguy Gary]

This looks great. I'm new to macro, can I ask how this shot was set up? Was if set up indoors with a black background? If not how did you get the background to be black?

[DanK]

Thanks, all.

Gary--I do these indoors, with continuous lighting. The background is a black fleece jacket. It sometimes will not be fully black, depending on the angle of lighting that I choose. If it is not fully black, I move the image into Photoshop to correct it. (Most of the editing I do either in Lightroom.) I make a selection based on the black color and tidy up the selection as needed. With the selection active, I add a levels adjustment layer, which automatically adds the selection as a mask on the adjustment layer. I then move the midpoint to turn the background fully black.

The lighting is usually some mix of diffused direct lighting and an umbrella. I'll post a picture of the setup I used for a different flower, which was not all that different a setup.

Dan

[JohnRostron]

Hmmm...I like this one in portrait better, Binnur and cropping from the bottom will not look right and seems to separate them more, whereas as is, there appears to be a connection at the bottom...I am wondering if you have Perfect Suite, you can do a masking and move the right one a little bit to the RHS to balance the distance.

I would agree with Izzie on this one.