Calla Burr Wood Lily
Today was one of those days where I didn’t think I was going to come up with any shots worth keeping as it had a stressful start. Despite getting up early enough – add in equipment misplacement issues and navigational issues in getting here to throw off your timing completely.
Something I have tried to teach myself is to try to make the best of any particular situation. I missed some of the early morning opportunities, but there were still images that could be made.
Shooting into the sun can be quite problematic for so many reasons – exposure is tricky, lens flare is almost always an issue, and quite frequently a lot of other details seem to end up either blown out or lost in shadows. I think they can work particularly well when the sun is partially blocked by some other object. In this case, I intentionally placed the sun behind some of the distant trees to control the flare a bit. Fortunately there was also a Wood Lily in nice condition where I could align the lily, the sunburst, and also have the distant tree catching some backlight. This scene is actually a blend of 5 exposures that I bracketed in 1 stop increments.
What a lovely image! How did you merge the five exposures?
Amazing image Mark! Everything’s just perfect here. The lily simply pops up from the green foliage.
Mark, wonderful composition and perfect situation for multiple exposures. You obviously work well with “stressful starts.”
That Wood Lily is a stand-out in the photo, capturing the eye immediately.
Thanks! I merged the exposures using Photomatix Pro. It does such a nice job on tricky situations like this. Even if I used a ND Grad for the sky/sun part, I think I would have ended up with exposure trouble on the sunbeams in the midground.
Tony Sweet has a discount code for this software for those that are interested:
http://web.me.com/tonysweetphoto/tonysweet_blog/Blog/Blog.html
Earl – don’t let the image fool you – stressful starts to a morning normally throwing the photo mojo way out of wack! Thanks though!
I just sat in amazement drinking this in for a time. It wasn’t easy competing with that sunburst, but the lily is clearly up to the task.
It’s a bit comforting to know that it took five exposures to put together this beautiful piece. Otherwise, I might have been tempted to give up after seeing this. Knowing I would never get that exposure would have been mighty discouraging. Still, the way you succeeded in bringing those exposures together is intimidating enough. This is inspiring.
Good observation Anita. That was actually something I worried about-the sunburst being too dominant. I hope the attempt to balance them is apparent in the image.
Beautiful image Mark, the Lily adds a striking anchor to this shot !!
Wonderful image! I like how the lily mimics the sunburst. The exposure is very lifelike. If anything it seems that working digitally has allowed a more truthful representation of what and how we see.
That is truly beautiful.
Thank you everyone!
That is awesome Mark! You did a great job with the blend – I like the fact that it doesn’t have that HDR cartoon like look.
Thanks Ron!
That is an unbelievable shot. Enjoying your pics.