Iris Flowers

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Bob Buchanan

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Iris Flower images taken today . . .

To view click a thumbnail, then click a second time for black background, then Next or Prev, or, click the Slideshow button. Either way, press F11 for full screen. The larger an Iris image the better!

Friends at QZ may have noticed the Iris flower in the pot beside my rig - though it had not as yet bloomed.  One of the pics here is that variety, named a Bay City Iris. Most varieties of Iris bloom in April and some just bloom whenever they feel like it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob-bluecanon/sets/72157633246228831/
 
Very nice collection Bob. My favorite is the last one with the Lady Bug.

Do you use Lightroom to post process? All three of the white flowers have blown highlights and they can be recovered with Lightroom. Email me the worst one in RAW and I will show how it will look. Or download the trial version and I will give you instructions.
 
SeilerBird said:
Very nice collection Bob. My favorite is the last one with the Lady Bug.

Do you use Lightroom to post process? All three of the white flowers have blown highlights and they can be recovered with Lightroom. Email me the worst one in RAW and I will show how it will look. Or download the trial version and I will give you instructions.

Thanks, Tom -- appreciate your bringing that to my attention. I sometimes edit with my laptop and don't get the edits I'm thinking I'm getting. Have messed with those three on my desktop and they now have more texture in the white zones.

However, would like to explore Lightroom and/or PS. There was a thread awhile back that, if I recall, you noted the differences between LR and PS - and why you lean toward LR. There was something folks can do with PS that they can't with LR. Do you recall that and what that difference was? HDR?

Would you be doing HDR in LR to correct such an image - or is there a different technique in LR. If so is it an easier process than HDR?

Thanks again - and glad you like my Iris collection so far. I "will" be doing more, plus messing more with the ones I already have.

So far my favorite is the Sharp Shooter - as far as which Iris. As to photographic value, I lean toward the Kaui Gold image.
 
You are welcome Bob. Yes there is many things you can do in PS you can't do in LR. PS can work at the pixel level and LR can't. But working at the pixel level is something 99.9% of photographers never do. When I say "working at the pixel level" I am referring to doing things like taking the head off of one person and putting it on another person. Or basically doing all the crazy things that most people think of when they hear the word "Photoshopping".

Anything LR can do, PS can do. PS has hundreds more options, but once again 99.9% of those options are for graphic artists, not photographers. LR was designed by PS engineers who are all dedicated photographers. Basically LR is a program designed by serious photographers for serious photographers.

You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe's web site and free tutorials are all over the Internet to get you started. And you definitely want to use the tutorials. It was designed by Apple fans and a lot of what they do is not logical to a Windows person. Not wrong, just different.

No I would not be doing HDR. I dislike HDR. I have yet to see an HDR photo that looked natural to me. LR has one control called "Recovery" and it works like magic. If you have an image with blown out highlights all you need to do is move the Recovery slider and the missing info magically appears. Of course then you have to adjust the brightness a little bit so the recovered portion matches the exposure of the rest of the shot. This is something HDR can't do, as far I can tell.

I copied the most blown out of the Iris photos and did a quick and dirty fix in LR. Took 15 seconds. All I did was move the Recovery slider and the brightness slider. I could do a lot better if I started with RAW instead of jpg, but this will give you an idea of the power of LR.
 

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SeilerBird said:
No I would not be doing HDR. I dislike HDR.

Good - I have avoided HDR because I don't have the time to do the entire process and nice to know there is an easier way.

Actually, I got pretty close on this Iris image by just going back and adjusting with what I have - and replaced it (and the other two) back on the flickr album. Have also reminded myself not to do final editing on my laptop.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob-bluecanon/8650371129/in/set-72157633246228831

Will download the trial version of LR as you suggest and mess with this image some more.  My RAWs average around 17.5mb. Though this Iris shouldn't have needed adjusting as much, some are very high contrast between the upper three petals (called Standards) and the lower three (called the falls). When I get it finished I'll make reference to it again here.

BTW, Canon's Digital Photo Pro handles most of what I need for most of my stuff. Of course, I avoid high contrast stuff to begin with whereas I would prefer taking those shots.
 
Bob Buchanan said:
Of course, I avoid high contrast stuff to begin with whereas I would prefer taking those shots.
That is a very wise thing to do. It is exactly what I do. The human eye has a much larger dynamic range than any camera. Just because you can see a scene does not mean the camera can see it as you see it. Post processing allows a wider dynamic range, but it will never come close to what the eye actually sees. That is my main dislike of HDR. They are taking a scene with a very wide dynamic range and compressing it. That compression always looks wrong to me. I prefer expanding the dynamic range rather than compressing it.
 

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