Tulips (Detail)

Tulips (Detail)
Originally uploaded by doug_r

A rather fun shot of some yellow tulips.

This particular image is a crop from a larger image shot. The lighting is all natural and provided by the sun bouncing off of snow (yes snow in in Issaquah mid March!) to provide uplights off the ground and off of snow covered trees in the background to profide back lighting.

I like this image for so many reason - there is a lot of scale here - from the really delicate ridging and veination of the petals, to the larger geometrics of the flower petals, cups, stems and leaves with lots in between as well. I also like the delicate illumination on the bottom of the flowers providing a rather interesting contrast to the stronger translucent qualities at the top of the petals. The oddly delinquent petal off on the right and the swirl pattern of it's veins really makes the whole shot and keeps it from being just another shot of spring tulips.

Camera wise, the 5D mkII is simply a dream tool for me. This image was taken with an older mark I version of the famous Canon 'nifty fifty' EF 50mm f1.8 lens. There is just so much more of a smooth color gradient available for processing here especially in a 16 byte color space that it's just like playing in butter compared to the range provided by my old reliable Canon 20D.

Processing wise, I went through a series of sketches with this image, looking at Titanium, Titanium-Platinum, and Platinum-Platinum tri-tones before finally settling on the Pt-Pt toning.

The usual adjustment steps of level & curves were followed by conversion to black and white using Nik Silver Efx. Increasingly, I am using an ISO 100 Agfa black and white film simulator. I find it gives me a nice grain and a wide tonal range with which to work. Similar speed films from Kodak produce much darker tones with fewer highlights while those from Fuji and Ilford tend to lighten things up at the expense of richness in the mid-darks.

After conversion to B/W, another round of curves and levels were applied to tweak things back into shape a bit followed by the double Platinum toning steps. Finally, a last bit of spotting and some sharpening (Smart Sharpening, radius, 1.1, value =30) and conversion to jpg were done to produce the final image.

My only issue with this image is the grain - I wish that I had been able to shoot it at lower initial ISO. However for a handheld grab shot it's not too terrible.

As always, comments and critiques are welcomed.