08 Nov 19 For today's macro/close-up we are going with another creative version of a dahlia and one picked out by Jan from a group of 5 offerings. I had a slightly different look in mind when I began to work on the original but this one came to mind as I was looking at the possibilities. The original was shot this afternoon in Jan's dahlia garden when the wind totally subsided, the light was right, and I wanted to play with some of the new buds appearing in the plants. Seems odd to me that we are getting more and more blossoms daily this time of the year, but the purples, whites, and a few yellows are really putting out. Some of those buds that appeared last week are now fully deployed, looking perfect, and offering me a chance to see what I can come up with before the season ends. For today I've picked one which I shot from the side but which unfortunately had another stem just below it and to the side so I had to digitally remove it. By slightly under exposing I was able to bring out the deep purple subtly hiding in it, and in doing so got the petals with dark edges. That gave me the idea of stained glass so that's what I did. If you have a small clear glass window in your church in need of some color, you might consider printing this out on a sheet of acetate and placing it in the window. As I mentioned above, I've removed the second stem, cropped the top and bottom for composition, and applied the effect courtesy of Topaz Glow 2. Church Window Art Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 250; 1/80 sec @ f / 9 with fill flash.
22 Nov 19 Yesterday was supposed to be a creative image, and with a little imagination one might say that the process I used could be considered just that, creative. Today's macro / close-up submission will definitely qualify as creative and in as much as my non creative liking bride chose it, I think it will be a go. There is a fern at the base of the front deck whose name I can't recall but it's Japanese "something" and I think that "something" has to do with color. In any event it is a beautiful broad leafed plant whose individual fronds are very stiff. It has a somewhat glossy appearance with a deeply patterned frond. I've modified the original some in addition to the creative effect in that I changed the color of the brown leaves to red. Thought the red made for a much nicer image. These ferns were rather slow in settling in, but are now in the process of claiming far too much of the garden. I'm thinking they need to be substantially cut back to allow some of the other rare plants near them some breathing room which would be nice as we have several rare plants in that part of the garden. I cropped off a fair amount from the right side and made the changes mentioned above. With a Georgian Touch Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/60 sec @ f / 7.1 with full flash.
15 Nov 19 The center piece tree in our landscape is called a Rising Sun Maple. Each year it puts on a brilliant display of yellows, oranges, and red leaves which shows off the distinctive maple shaped leaves. This year it hung on to its leaves until just a couple days ago and nicely distributed them around one end of the pond. The result was having a brightly colored carpet surrounding the waterfall end and beyond. I thought it would be fun to capture some of the carpet for both traditional images and blurred as backgrounds and I did. With the multiple individual colors in addition to the strongly outlined leaves I thought that some of the shots would also lend themselves to the leaded glass look and today's macro / close-up is of that flavor. Other than a small amount of cropping and the removal of a couple distractions, plus the obvious conversion, this is what the camera captured. Window Dressing Nikon D500; 18 - 200; Aperture Priority; ISO 500; 1/100 sec @ f / 7.1 with full flash.
