Nature Part 2 (Echoing Flowers)

So... I promised more nature and here it is! I finished editing the bright flowers and came up with some unique images to share. I placed the group of flowers (I believe there were 5 total) behind a single flower in order to get more color into the photo. I tried to do this without losing any of the wonderful reflections of the main flower. You will see that the background is blurred out which is called "bokeh" in photography terms. This technique isn't as easy as one might think and can take lots of practicing to get just right. This first photo has so many neat things going on. It has all the different colors in it, a great reflection of part of the flower and the wonderful flower bokeh in the background. I was super happy with this image. The next images will be a photo manipulation that I've made from this original photo.

This look is attained by making a mirror image of the same flower in the first image. Because the flower has the dark circular center it creates a look of "eyes" in the second image when mirrored. I think this photo looks like an insect and it has a feel of being made out of tissue or origami paper because of the petals looking like they've been folded and carefully crafted to make the mini creature. Some people won't like my manipulations, but I find them to be fascinating and fun to create...you should try playing with your photos this way too!




This image here is simply
straight off the camera.












This next image is yet the same photo, but turned into a "painting" style finish. The colors were enhanced a little by adding in more contrast to the photo. I think it gives it a very unique look and can be used as a great piece of art if printed onto the right material-such as canvas or linen textured high grade photography paper.













On to a different image all together. This next flower is actually one that I posted yesterday as the third image down on my blog. I wanted to show you how much you can do with a single image. It can have so many different looks. I basically used a one step editing tool to "punch" the image. What that means is the images becomes enlarged some and almost pops out of the photo. That's all I did...and you see it's so different from my previous post of the same flower! You can also "pinch" images to make them shrink backwards into the photo. I only encourage using these techniques when shooting objects or flowers. It doesn't work that well on people because it may make them look distorted.

This last flower is a twist on the previous one. It looks like I just converted it to a black & white photo, but that isn't the case. I used a special combination of effects to remove color from the photo while increasing the contrast and at the same time creating a "hot spot" within the photo. This is basically a more in depth way of brightening certain parts of a photo. So in the photo you will notice the flower is bright while the reflection is dull and barely noticeable. I sometimes find that creating several different versions of the same image-in this case-a flower, works well for collages or groupings to hang together as art.

That's all for now. Check back to see some wild dandelions tomorrow!