This has NOT been the week for technology - I should have stayed in bed and forsworn touching any computers all week long. I had just written a rather longish posting detailing the image taking and processing details when flickr/blogger ate it due to a password snafu created as an unintended consequence earlier in the week. Grrrrrr. I will try to recreate the post again. dtr.
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This image of a Dogwood tree flower was taken at dusk on 17 May 2009 at Pickering Farm in Issaquah, Washington. It was taken, handheld, using a Canon 5D mk II and a Canon EF 50mm f1.4 lens set up at ISO 250, 1/160 second shutter speed at f2.5. This is a small crop from a much larger image, though this crop was the image pre-visualized when photo was taken.
I had always thought of dogwood flowers as rather slick and plastic but after spending an hour photographing them it's apparent they are really quite nice little studies in petal drapery: ridges, folds, swells and bumps with a ton of very nice wrinkled cotton-y sort of texture. So much for observations while driving.
Processing-wise this image followed a reasonably normal route in Photoshop, beginning with a Layers adjustment layer to bracket the tonal bandwidth, followed by a very slightly downwardly convex Curve layer to bump up the contrast in the low to middle mid-tones.
Next came conversion to black and white using the most excellent Nik SilverEfx (AgEfx) package. That tool has very decent set of film profiles including one for an Agfa ISO 100 black and white film that has a broad and subtle tonal response that the Kodak and Fuji profiles lack. I'm using that profile quite alot these days and this image was no exception. While in the AgEfx package, I also dialed back the exposure about 1.5 stops, and applied a very mild cyan-ish filter to bump the contrast in the upper to middle shadow range. Finally, before exiting, I gently burned the top, bottom and left edges to enhance the vignetting of the blossom.
Emerging from AgEfx tool, another Levels adjustment layer was applied to set the One True Black Point. I didn't see any value in setting a One True White Point because the histogram already extended to the far right end of the range. Next came another curve layer, this one a very mild 'S' shaped to extend the contrast a little bit more.
Toning came next, with a combination of three washes. The first layer was set up as a duotone to echo the colors in a Silver Gel image, though with a very high transparency. The result of this was to just kiss the petal tops with a very, very slight yellowy tint. This was followed by a greenish gray Platinum duotone and a subsequent brownish gray Platinum duotone layers to give substance and tonality to the mid-range and shadow tones. These washes give the final image a very slight tritone look with whites, very very pale yellows in the lower highlights and greenish-brown deep shadows darkening to true black.
As is normally the case, the image was then sharpened in a mild way with the Photoshop Smart Sharpen function, resampled to 72 dpi and reformatted to jpeg for display on the web.
Looking at the image now, I'm relatively pleased by most aspects of it. Compositionally, I wish that the flower petals were less square to the viewer and at more of an angle. This would, perhaps, give the image a bit more energy, though this arrangement, as it sits, has a certain serene quality to it. This shooting angle also preserved that tasty bit of reflected light bouncing off the petals back onto the surfaces of the leaves at the left that would have been lost with a more oblique view. The diagonals and curves of the lower branches also tend to give the eye some natural direction as well. Tradeoffs and more tradeoffs...
As you might expect after so much futzing with toning, the image looks best on a calibrated monitor where the various grays really emerge. I tried about five or so different combinations of tonal washes, including some colder blue gray / Selenium looks to get something new and interesting. Eventually, I wound up with the Ag gel - Pt - Pt sequence. If I were to go back in I think I'd probably ramp the Ag gel wash transparency back slightly more to about 8 or 10%. Novelty, in the form of the Ag gel toning, is coming slowly to my toning preferences.
I'm getting quite happy with the combination of the 5D and the fast 50mm lens. While the near focusing distance is uncomfortably far as yet, I'm having a lot of fun with it and it's contending as a replacement for my beloved 20D / 35mm f3.0 combination.
This image is good enough to be added to one of the Botanical folios on the PacificaPhoto.net site and so prints will be offered for sale from there soon. As always, your comments and criticisms are encouraged. if you do want a print, they are available by contacting me at the email address listed on the PacificaPhoto site.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sunday, May 03, 2009
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