I’m not a very good gardener. So in our garden we keep it simple. I keep my eye out for native plants that don’t need a lot of care. This year we tried two patches of wildflowers in our garden. One worked really well and the other is struggling. I think the patch that is struggling just doesn’t get enough sun. The patch that is doing well has produced some beautiful coneflowers:
ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/40
In order to get this photo I used my tripod. These flowers are only somewhat protected by the house, so any breeze will blur the photo. I could have overcome this by shooting at a higher ISO and shutter speed, but in this case the color is better if the ISO and shutter speed are low. It is a subtle difference, but in this case it mattered to me. I settled on an f-stop of 3.2. That left enough in focus and blurred out enough of the background. So, I was happy with this version of the photo, but I did want to create something a bit different:
ISO 200 50mm 0ev f/3.2 1/40
The theme of this week’s photo challenge by WordPress is carefree. So, I wanted to create a slightly dreamier looking version of my original photo. I used Photoshop to do my editing. I have applied an oil paint filter to the photo. Then I used the high pass filter with soft light. The result you see above is more mellow than the original photo. Ironic isn’t it, that I had to do more work to look carefree?
Cheers!
Photography Journal Blog 