dandelion.

This past weekend I was at a friend’s house in Post Falls, and this time a year, dandelions [alive and dead] are everywhere still. So I grabbed one out of her yard, set it on her backyard picnic table, turned on my Macro, and tried to take pictures of the weed [it’s in fact a weed, not a flower] at different angles like Twitchell recommended I should do. I thought of taking shots from the side and the back of the flower, seeing what’s in the plant and what the stem looks like too. Like I said… as ironic as it is, the idea and inspiration for this post and these pictures came from an awesome dude.. Mr. Twitchell; he told me on another blog post of mine that I should’ve tried photographing flowers from a different angle, so I tried it!

before: I don’t like how bright the flower is, actually.

after: I changed the levels, unsharp mask, contrast, and vibrance on this picture. It sounds like a lot of editing, but I tried really hard not to go overboard. I don’t think it looks too edited at all. I wanted the picture to look calmer than the original because it was too bright before.

before: once again, the petals are too bright! gotta change the vibrance on this too…

after: okay I changed the vibrance! And sharpened it up a little bit. And changed around the levels just a smidge. The focus on the stem and my friend’s puppy Teddy [as much as you can see of him] in the depth of field, I think are my favorite aspects of this picture.

before: okay time for a bright picture that I actually liked it being bright..

after: I edited this quite a bit, I do realize. But the contrast on the little things coming out the middle of the dandelion makes them more noticeable and sharp.

3 responses to “dandelion.”

  1. Macro can be quite a bit of fun to shoot, it literally allows you to look at things as you have not before. Dandelions are something that we always walk over, mow over, kick, throw at little brothers or sisters, but seldom look closely at.
    For your inspiration, the idea is to look at other photographer’s work- perhaps look up photographers that shoot macro or shoot flowers. What can you learn from them? What can you see in their work that you like? Don’t like?

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  2. I think that these are very good pictures. I like how you darkened the picture because I think you are right on how bright it is. I think that shooting the flower, I am sorry weed, in different angles makes the picture look more interesting. There isn’t anything that I don’t like after the looking at the after pictures.

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  3. I really like the way you desaturated the first picture. It brings out the colors of the dandelion and really puts focus on it. The last photo is really good. Your edit job is outstanding. One thing that I can learn from this is that a photo doesn’t have to be vibrant to be a good photo. Decreasing vibrance can actually help highlight parts of a photo.

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