Nicely captured and exposed, highlights help lift roses from background.
It's based on a Xrite Passport...Temp of 2850...the background is a white sheet.What are you doing for white balance?
I find myself trying to count the stripes in the background. But this could just be my strangeness?
I like this, especially in a square crop format...
That's definitely better than (to use your own words) the 'sucks' one
The thing is, for the casual viewer, we don't know the background is white - made vastly pink by the 'wrong' WB for the light - there's no 'known white' object to act as a reference for us to appreciate the colour temp of the light (and WB of image) is what's causing the odd colours.It's based on a Xrite Passport...Temp of 2850...the background is a white sheet.
Although the histogram doesn't appear to show it, (mainly) the rose on the left looks like it lost detail and saturation due to red clipping, but perhaps it's because the colour is well outside the gamut my monitor supports. The embedded profile is "Apple RGB" and although I believe my browser (FireFox) supports it, as said, my monitor probably cannot do it justice. I wonder, since you're displaying on the web, what a version converted to sRGB would look like?
Since that's what most everyone will be viewing, some with non-colour managed browsers which may be showing something with less saturation.
I think this rather clearly demonstrates that both the candle lit and golden hour look are the result of far more than simply having a light source that is the "right" colour temperature. Quality, quantity and direction of the light are equally important.
It would seem that I screwed up when doing the conversion from ProPhoto in that it endedwhat a version converted to sRGB would look like
up in RGB...my bad. I went back and checked...in this case the difference was moot.
Routinely, I apply a levels layer to drop the RGB numbers to a maximum of 245 as they are
often clipped during the conversion...is there a better method??
Not sure what you mean by "visual context" clues.
Alas...I'm still not achieving my goals.Quality, quantity and direction of the light are equally important
Difficult to say with the context of the shots you have done with the LED bulbs so far.
I dunno, let's think; if you were taking pictures of flowers in 'golden hour' sunlight, it would be perhaps a background that included clouds similarly side lit to your subject, with an appropriately coloured sky between them.
Or if shooting say a single rose stem indoors, supposedly lit by candle light, then apart from the "Quality, quantity and direction of the light", you might include other props (in frame) that suggest the (out of frame) candle - perhaps a second unlit one? or a match in an ashtray?
And/or, as suggested earlier, include something we know should be white.
You are the artistic one, I'm sure it will come to you sooner or later.
Hmm...maybe laying the flower on a mirror, atop the evening's sun reflection, to give me
back and front lighting at the same time.