Lilies in life and decay

[derekphil]

I thought this was a nice juxtaposition of two lilies, one in full flower and one nearly dead. In the midst of life, and all that.
Taken at the National Botanical Gardens of Wales.
Three exposure bracket, with saturation and luminosity adjustments.

[Wavelength]

Well captured...

[DanK]

Well conceived and well done.


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[Manfred M]

Nicely composed and executed. While the contrast between the fresh and old bloom make this image, having some detail in the background is also a very important part of this composition. The small quibble I have is the blown highlight and crushed shadow detail.

[lesno1]

Well donw looks nice with the black background

[derekphil]

Nicely composed and executed. While the contrast between the fresh and old bloom make this image, having some detail in the background is also a very important part of this composition. The small quibble I have is the blown highlight and crushed shadow detail.

Thanks Manfred.
I think bringing up the shadow detail has helped a lot.
I'm not sure the highlight was blown, but there was a lack of detail there, so I cloned in some texture.
I think this is better.

[Manfred M]

I'm not sure the highlight was blown, but there was a lack of detail there, so I cloned in some texture.
I think this is better.

Adobe Camera Raw suggests loss of detail at both ends.

[DanK]

This is one instance in which Manfred and I have a relatively long-standing disagreement. My view is that loss of detail is a problem when there is detail one doesn't want to lose but can be fine otherwise. I doubt anyone tells aspiring painters never to use black paint. For example, I do a lot of flowers against what I want to be a black background, and my postprocessing routine for them includes deliberately crushing any unwanted detail that remains. In fact, I posted one of these just a few days ago (Japanse peonies), but here is another example:



so, I would start by asking: what did you want the background to be? It's not clear from the original. It has a lot of pure black, as Manfred has shown, but it also has a faint trace of a stem at the bottom right. Personally, I would have been inclined to bring out the stems more (see the top shot in the linked thread above) but would probably have blacked out most or all of the rest. However, that's just my taste.

[pschlute]

I like the concept and the photo. A lot. Reminds me of an old master painting.

Your second version has the dying flower looking a little over-processed/sharpened to me. You have also exposed what appear to be hot pixels which need cleaning up.

[derekphil]

I really don't want to prolong this unnecessarily, but thought it would be worthwhile posting the image as it came out of the camera.
The background is busy and distracting, so I removed it with saturation and luminance controls and then some burning.
Addressing DanK's' point about keeping the stems in, I appear to have lost them between versions 1 & 2; I normally like to keep some minimal info from the b/ground, while removing all the distractions.
Peter, I'm not sure they are hot pixels, they don't appear on the original; I think I exaggerated them with my processing.
Many thanks to you all for your helpful comments.

[Wavelength]

You could very well convert the original to a theme focused presentation!!!

[Shadowman]

Nicely composed.