A protea, I think

[DanK]

I think this flower is a protea. Had a bunch of different cut flowers around the house from a dinner, and I decided to try one of these quickly before it wilted more.

Tech details: 10 shots, f/7.1, 1/5 sec, continuous halogen lighting, 100mm macro lens, stacked with Zerene DMap, touched up with Zerene PMax.

Best in lytebox (why is it spelled that way?)

C&C welcome, as always.

[pnodrog]

Leucospurnum? Part of the Protea family. Whatever it is I like it. Not sure about the choice of crop. Square may work better.

P.S. They don't wilt particularly quickly so you may get a chance of another photo session if you want to.

[Manfred M]

Yes - definite one of the members of the protea family.

These flowers are gorgeous in the wild - I remember large bushes growing along the roadside in Western Cape province (area near Cape Town) in South Africa. What really surprised me is how tough and woody these flowers are. They look so delicate, but are quite sturdy.

[mknittle]

Very nice image Dan.

[rudi]

This kind off Leucospermum is also referred to as 'Pincushion Protea'.

Indeed, very nice image Dan. Good stack too, not easy with those spiky petals. A lot off cleanup was needed I guess ??

Though I find it a pitty the leaves are cut, the lighting is a nice touch !!

Maybe a slight rotation CW, so the stemm comes in the left corner might work also ??

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Ziggy]

Great detail in this one.

[DanK]

Thanks, all.

Rudi--I agree. I wasn't sure what to do with the leaves, so I simply removed them to have freedom to play around with the flower, but I think the next one should include the leaves, assuming I can get a perspective in which the leaves don't obscure to much.

Re cleanup: not too much. This is one of the main reasons I use Zerene for stacking. It has two algorithms. DMap is better at preserving colors and textures, so it is my base for flowers. PMax is less prone to halos from parallax and does a bit better at preserving fine detail. Zerene has a simple retouching tool that allows you to paint either from a base image in the stack to a composite or from one composite to another. My usual way of handling flowers that are likely to have parallax halos is to stack both ways. I then inspect the DMap composite at high magnification for halos, and when I find them, I paint from the PMax if it looks better. Zerene moves the two images together, so it is very easy to do. In this case, I also used PMax in a few areas to recover more of the fine detail in the filaments. I didn't keep track, but I would guess that the entire cleanup took perhaps 5 minutes.

[Wavelength]

That is superb

[bnnrcn]

Very nice image, I like the color and shape of the flower

[Sam W]

Nice results Dan.

[IzzieK]

The dark background made this image more pronounced, Dan. A bit of rotation to put the stem at the left hand corner will be better. Ooopppsss! rudi made the same comment. Sorry...I will just give you +1 instead of removing my comment.

[DanK]

thanks, all. next time I will play with rotations to see what they look like.