Cool! I love the color of this one. I thought it was a painting at first.

This was a first try and I'm very pleased at how it worked. However... it really needs more color and detail in the flower. I'll have to go back and see what I can do with Lightroom and also of course, remember what adjustments to make next time.

Agreed that the flower could have been more blue. But I can't think of the way to do it in such low light...

a-HA! Flash! A few months ago when I was showing off some of my prints to my bud, the old guy who used to teach photography, he said that it looked like I'd be starting to use reflectors soon. I said gods, I'm hurting just carrying the camera bag and all, I can't add some big reflector thing! Then he tells me, hell, you can carry a piece of paper can't you? Ha! Shows you how much I know or have actually read about photography! This would be just the place to do that, just set up or have someone hold a white piece of paper just off shot to bounce some light, just enough, onto the flower. There is a ton of light there (1/400 & f14!) it's just gotta be directed a bit.

Your eye for colour and shape... Jeebus. I'm in yer gallery, yoinking yer pix!

This was an experiment that worked. I'm giving it a B- but will use this technique to get some A+ come summer.

"Experiments" can be what garners an artist their best work. My opinion may only be subjective, but I really enjoy the subtle colour of the common blue-bells that grow as weeds at home, and managing to catch that amazing golden glow behind them, yet still keeping their beauty is what makes this one for me. You took an ordinary, weedy pest that infests our back lanes and peeled off that "weed" view and revealed the sublime. This is why I like your stuff, hon- you look at so-called "ordinary" things and see stories in them.

So there!

It took a lot of tweak and boost with Lightroom to get any color and detail at all! I just had a flash though as I reread Kuisbright's comment and as you'll see in my reply I think I've figured out a way to get that next time. I thunk a good thought in the upstairs brain-thingie (Oh gods is King Julian ever fucking hilarious in Madagascar 2!!) and rethought what I was thunking at the time... When I learn anything I first nail down the variables and parameters I have to work with. With photography it's basically shutter speed, iris size, depth of field is the product of those (actually rather interestingly, it's exactly the same relationship as Ohms Law, shutter speed inversely proportional to f-stop, and solution is the product of that and the amount of light). In any case, I wanted to do a picture that would produce those polygons, the shape of the iris. So, the iris has to be almost closed so, high f-stop. Next up was what point sources to use to get the shapes (god I love those starbursts, as in the sparkles around Gracie) so the background was the sunset sparkling off the waves in the distance. This flower is at the top of a cliff, at the edge so there, that's how I got the background. THEN... pant pant, after that... *grin* what to use. Well, anything with a wide field would take in too much background when the subject was centered and zoomed and all that so.... 70-210, max zoom, minimum focal distance. WHEEE!