Let's leave the moonrise for a bit and take a look at an image I sent out a couple weeks back but at that time it was in an altered form. Here is the basis for the creative "memorial day poppy" that you may recall was vivid red with a yellow center. If you still have it you may want to compare. If not it has no impact on what I'm sharing today. Depending on your perspective, this is either a close up or a macro shot, and I would consider it a close up, but the terminology is not important. One frequently employed technique for displaying flower photography is to place the image behind something creative such as frosted glass or rippled glass or anything else that gives it some form of a textured look. One could also place the flower in front of translucent textured material in order to keep the flower sharp while blurring out the background. Of course one could always do the same by applying a Gaussian blur to the entire image and then masking out the portion that you wanted to keep sharp. Here is yet another approach which I've employed in this image. To get the background to drop out, I've added noise (think grain) to the image and then masked out the portion of the flower I want to keep sharp. Not necessarily a better way than the others, just another tool in the chest for when you might like to try something a bit different. Like moving to a high ASA film in the good old days, but with far greater control. ISO 200; 1/1600 @ / 8.
