Lets play 7-14-2018

[Ben Egbert]

See the let’s play guidelines above

I saw this flower along the path at Yachats. I only had my 24-70 mounted and took this image which I think came out ok, but needs some help to make the flower pop. Also I think it needs some serious cropping.

Show me what you would do with it. As an additional challenge, see if you can mask the flower and blur the background without tells.

Here is a link to the download page.

http://www.focalworld.com/index.php?resources/lets-play-7-14-2018-a.18/

the attached image is a small jpg of the raw, but use the download dng file for rework.

 

[JimFox]

This is an interesting Let's Play you chose Ben! As much as I love Landscapes, It's nice to get different types of photos in here to play with also.

Once I am done downloading and backing up my recent photos, I will take a stab at this.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks Jim, I thought this would make an interesting change and also provide a different sort of challenge. We have some excellent flower photographers here, I hope they will bring their experience to play.

 

[JimFox]

So here is mine. A bit of a crop, a little content aware fill to remove a dead grass. Also a little blur to the background and a slight darkening of the background.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This looks good Jim. I am sorry about the ACR setting being passed through.

I fixed the dng, the new one is not really much different however, but I checked it and all settings are camera raw default.

 

[JimFox]

Thanks Ben, I do hope some of our guys who are more proficient at flower photos will take a shot at this one too.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Right jim I am used to some people who can mask the flower and blur the background so it looks like a shallow dof shot. My masking is not that good.

That is the main issue with image.

 

[AlanLichty]

Fairly quick hack but here is one try at this:

Almost feels a bit too isolated as a subject with this selection/blur effort.....

 

[Ben Egbert]

Now that's exactly what I was seeking Alan. I tried it dozens of times and never got away from tells. I see none here.

 

[JimFox]

Yep, Alan did good!

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Here is mine. A slightly tighter crop than Alan. Masked the flower using Topaz remask, blurred the background using lens blur and then composited. Did some selective burning on the green leaves as its brightness distracts from the flower. Again a bit more isolation than would naturally come with a large aperture lens.

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is really neat Jameel, just the sort of thing I was looking for.

 

[Kyle Jones]

Here's my version...

 

[Ben Egbert]

This one is also very nice Kyle, the flower pops nice and the background looks natural.

 

[JimFox]

Here is mine. A slightly tighter crop than Alan. Masked the flower using Topaz remask, blurred the background using lens blur and then composited. Did some selective burning on the green leaves as its brightness distracts from the flower. Again a bit more isolation than would naturally come with a large aperture lens.

I like this too Jameel, nice work.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

This is a tough one because there is so much going on in this image. But it seems obvious to me that the flower is the central subject so I worked to isolate it by darkening and blurring the parts that were not vital to the image. I kept some of the leaves in focus because it didn't look right to have the flower floating without a connection to something. So here it is.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the additional foliage Doug - my version felt like a cut and paste job for a backdrop since the flower was so isolated.