Nature and Floral Studies...

"Just Beginning..."

Our local park will never cease to be a source of inspiration to me. When I can't get away, or only have a small amount of time available, it's my go-to locale to dust off my skills and have some me time.

This study of a new sunflower is from a ramble I took last weekend. This was not done in a studio. This was out in a perennial bed at Gage Park. I love its color and the elegant way the greenery stretches to each corner or the frame. As I hovered near each brilliant flower or bud with my telephoto or prime lens, I noticed a gentleman watching me work as he wandered around the gardens. Finally curiosity got the better of him and he asked if I was busy taking pictures of only the flowers. I always find this question funny... I'm bent down, crawling on the ground at funny angles, aiming into clumps of flowers ...so I'm obviously photographing classic cars. I said I was indeed and his next question was, "why so many?"

Where would I start? Nature studies are intense and fun at the same time? Floral studies demand I pay close attention to clean exposures, tiny details that will draw the eye, and to feed my need for beauty and color? By the time I'm done I always smell nice and flowery?

Instead of attempting to explain myself, I held up the back of my camera and showed him why. This image was on the view screen and he looked at it carefully then said, "That's THIS sunflower?" and pointed to my subject sitting across from us in the sun. I asked why he was surprised. He pointed to the stalk in the sun and asked why in my photo it was only black in the background, but clearly we could see all the bushes and greenery surrounding the sunflower not five feet away from us. I carefully explained that the bush just behind the flower was in shadow, and if I was careful about how I used my settings, I could use it like a dark screen and make the flower pop.

To my surprise, he asked me to take another one in front of him and prove it. I laughed and agreed. I set up the shot again, and then showed him my result in the screen once more. Satisfied, he shook my hand, asked if I had a website, and said he will watch for more photos from the garden.

We parted ways, and it got me thinking about how we intentionally use exposure to provide the viewer with the story and feelings we wish to create in a photograph. Not just because we know it's good photography to have a good exposure, but because it's a way to showcase the beauty around us. The visitor was expecting to see the rest of the garden within the frame along with my sunflower, and instead he experienced something dramatically different. And that's why I love floral studies.

Photography on any level should be able to do that for you too. Keep that in mind the next time you raise your camera to your eye. Have a great week, and thanks for another ramble, friends!

Raw is Just Too Important ~ Telephoto Tuesday

"Flamenco Dancer"

Today's image was brought to you by... shooting in RAW. By shooting in Raw I mean that nothing of this original file was compressed or eliminated by the camera as it recorded each shot, and all the digital information was there when I opened this image in Corel's PSPx3 and proceeded to make some adjustments and fine tuning. Yes it means it was a rather large file, yes it means it took up a lot of space on my computer, yes it means I have to have a program capable of opening it but I couldn't have made this shot without it. So for everyone who has banned shooting in RAW for good because jpegs just seem easier, I have some concerns on that way of thinking. I'll use today's image of this regal Poppy to expound further.

The first reason this image was successful being shot in a Raw format was (drum roll please....) "reds" are difficult. You heard me. Intense reds are extremely reflective in nature. They cause your meters to react in wild and woolly ways. Hard sun and you have blowout galore, losing whatever rich color was present. On overcast days like the one I was out in when I took this shot, the blue cast from the clouds overhead did strange things to the color as well. To get a very accurate poppy red in this image, I needed to be able to tweak color temperature, adjust select areas of exposure where the red became too hot no matter what I adjusted in camera, and I needed to use almost a high def processing to keep the layers of petals from bleeding into each other. Bring in some curves adjustment, some clarify, and some high pass sharpen and I had far more control over this in Raw processing than if I had a limited jpeg to work with, no matter how big that jpeg file might be. All without compromising the digital integrity of the file. Here's the unprocessed version with the best exposure possible that day....

Can everyone say "BLECHHHHH"....? Exactly. Dull, with no oomph.

Here's another reason why after all that editing, shooting in Raw won out. The image quality was never compromised after mucking about in all that processing. I could have done the same to a jpeg, but unless you're working with a killer pro camera who's jpegs are bigger than Atlantic City, you're going to notice the image quality begin to compromise. Excessive noise, edges and once sharp details show degradation, and gone is the possibility of a massive gallery print with impact. (All because of an unruly color.) This is just one more reason I work in Raw. But there's more...

At some point, someone is going to want to use your images! You may not think you're heading in that direction right now, but don't purposely eliminate the possibilities folks. This is where I regretted listening to so many people early on in my photographic journey who said I'd never need large files from Raw images, and didn't look into the major benefit of shooting in Raw. I missed my first huge breakout into the world of professional photography when an image caught the eye of another artist/magazine editor and wanted the image in their personal collection and on their magazine cover... and I couldn't give it to them. The file size and resolution was too small because I thought a fine jpeg setting in my camera was enough. Had I used my Raw menu option in my camera, I could have printed the giant canvas he requested, and also could have had a final tiff file that would have more than adequately met his cover page requirements for size and resolution. I can't stress enough that unless you have a monster camera to begin with... you need all the digital info you can get packed into your images. Shooting in Raw does that. Shooting your career in the foot? Not so fun. Trust me.

My advice to the few of you I've had conversations about this with, is don't let the word RAW intimidate you. Do your homework, work out the differences for yourself as you extend your knowledge of shooting with a DSLR, and big, large, slow files or not, Raw doesn't have to hamper your enjoyment of photography. All you need is to find a Raw program in Adobe, or Corel that suits your budget and your needs and the frustration can disappear as you go smoothly from one workflow to the next. The quality of your photography will know no bounds. And that's just too important to ignore shooting in Raw.

Thanks for the ramble... and have a good one!