Orchids

After a day spent splashing around in cold water while at work, I decided to do something relaxing and fun when I got home. Somehow Kim and I have managed to accidentally grow a beautiful Orchid. It lives in our bathroom (so our cats won't eat it) and is thriving quite well. My idea of a fun relaxing afternoon meant moving the Orchid downstairs into the Dog Cave (I hate the trem "Man Cave" so I use "Dog Cave" because the basement is also where our big dogs have their bowls, beds, and crates along side my photography stuff) for some photos.


I placed the Orchid on a table and then grabbed a tripod and mounted my camera. I used an 24-85mm zoom (which has a macro switch) for the shot. I had thoughts of shooting it in natural light, but the day was very overcast and there was almost no light streaming in from the windows. So I lit it. I wanted an even spread of light, that filled deep into the flower. I wasn't concerned with direction at all, and I wanted the light very tight in on the Orchid. I used my ring flash. It was maybe a couple of inches at most from the Orchid. This close in, the light was relatively huge and powerful. My final working aperture was something like f/29 and I never went above 1/4 power on my SB800 (which was mounted in the Orbis Ring Flash, triggered via a ttl cord). I kinda liked the look I was getting with the photo largely underexposed. I shot some brighter, some darker, but really was digging the darker images. It really brought out the colors perfectly. Setup shot below.

Setup of how I shot the Orchid photos. 

Right out of the camera I was quite pleased. I kept my ss @ 1/250 to kill most of the ambient and ISO at 200. Here is an image with no adjustments.

Orchid, with no adjustments.

I was getting a little bit of a reflection from something in the background (I think it was a shiny edge of a TV) and a nice hint of other Orchid blooms around the main subject. Not to bad. I made some minor tweaks in LR and then moved into PS for some work. I removed a few inconsistient spots on the flower first. Then I created 2 different curves adjustment layers. One for shadows and the other for highlights. I then painted in some additional highlights and shadows to the image. Next I added a saturation layer and made some very minor adjustments to the color of the Orchid. Then I converted the image to Lab color and made another slight adjustment to the color. A little sharpening to finish and then save as a jpeg.

Orchid, edited.

I then edited a second image. This time I removed everything except the main bloom of the Orchid and made the same adjustments as earlier. This image did start just a little brighter.

Orchid Symmetry...

I think this may be the image I use for the next group challenge, Symmetry. I got to pick the challenge theme this month. I didn't have this in mind at the time. I was thinking something more along the lines of a symmetrical pattern in a piece of fruit or on a flower. I think this works rather well for the challenge though. If I stumble across something better between now and the deadline I might change my mind.