FUCHIA "GILLIAN ALTHEA"

This year we got baskets of something called Fuchia "Gillian Althea" to hang at the entrance to our home. The plants feature abundant showy flowers, each two to three inches across. The blossoms have a complex system of petals, and I decided to use my macro lens to photograph just a portion of one of the blossoms to create a colorful abstract. 

What drew me to this particular flower was the fact that the backlighting of the blossom's interior created a sense of depth that appealed to me.  

My macro lens allows me to get very close (2-3 inches between the front of the lens and the subject).  As a result the image is not greatly cropped.  The drawback is that the optics reduces significantly the images depth of field.  I chose to focus on the leading edge of one of the petals, but even at relatively narrow aperture of f/22, the overall focus is a bit soft.  Because the image is semi-abstract to begin with, in post processing I softened it further by reducing contrast.

The next day I took another shot of the same blossom but in different lighting conditions.  Here is how that turned out.

In this shot I wanted to emphasize more the backlighting of the blossom's interior.  The light was warmer as well.  I also introduced a bit more overall contrast between lighter and darker elements.  All of which served to make for a more dramatic shot. This was taken at an extremely narrow aperture of f/64, my macro lens's limit.  Even so, there are elements of greater and lesser sharpness of focus.

John

© 2020 John M. Phillips