This is a sunflower in front of my solarium window. There are a few keys to achieving this effect:
1) Shutter speed 1/8 or longer
2) A good background--either dark or light
3) Shoot something with vivid colors and/or good color contrasts
4) Take lots of shots and experiment with different kinds of movement.
It's the movement that's key!
Lens: Sigma 18-125mm, polarizer
ISO 100, Canon RAW
1/4 second exposure, F24
Processed in Bibble:
White balance by clicking
Saturation Boost: 51
Sharpening: 294
Slight curves adjustment
Cropped
Reduced in PS, because it seemed to lose something when I reduced it in Bibble (plus I was going to frame it but the framing didn't look good.)
Statistics
Place: 70 out of 191 Avg (all users): 5.4543 Avg (commenters): 7.7143 Avg (participants): 5.3297 Avg (non-participants): 5.5000 Views since voting: 3292 Views during voting: 448 Votes: 339 Comments: 24 Favorites: 10 (view)
thanks for the tips-nice thing about most days of shooting flowers close up, you can count on a breeze to move the bloom just as you're ready to shoot! Scott Kelby says the same thing as you-use the wind (movement)& a sloooow shutter to capture a different floral image..
nice abstract feel to this & sweet color!
i gave this shot a 9. It wasn't a ten as although i love the shot it just didn't have that extra point. Can't say what that extra 'thing' is. A very good shot, and certainly breaking ground. Keep up the good work.
Nice entry. I gave it a 6, but in retrospect I may have bumped this up to a 7. It is brave to experiment with focus and blur. This shot works but to some people it is important to have focus in an image as a reference (and maybe to convince them the shot was not blurred due to error!) e.g. a shot of blurred water over a waterfall is set off against pin sharp rocks.
quite a fine image. it all works well - though coming from your camera not sure it fits in the breaking new ground theme.
i didn't enter or vote here - but it would have scored highly from me.
I didn't vote on this challenge. But this is a BEAUTIFUL image, and I think it's been voted far too low. Looks like you go for the impressionistic, and go for it well too :).
Keep them coming!
i gave this a ten. I know people always vote abstracty images down so I always give them 10 in an effort to promote them. This image would have gotten a 9 or ten even without the affirmative action.
You really do like this impressionistic stuff, don't you :). I'm really surprised this didn't at least push six, it's really a beautiful image, and a very good example of what it seems is your favourite style of photography.
Firstly I'll start by saying that the score you received is WAY too low. There were many shots that scored above this in the challenge which IMHO didn't break new ground in any way and weren't even as pretty to look at.
This shot is a beauty, it has that impressionist feel to it (it may have done better in the Impressionist challenge for that reason as someone else suggested). I love the way blue in the background contrasts with the yellow of the flower and the sense of movement created by the motion blur.
The cropping is spot on, it is so easy on the eye I could look at it all day.
The only thing I can think to say that I don't like is the title which doesn't seem to go too well with the image. Maybe something related to movement would have been better.
Perhaps some viewers didn't consider this to be 'breaking new ground' which might explain the low score. A lot of people probably thought, 'Big deal, he's just waving a flower around' without actually trying the technique for themselves and realising just what a great capture this is.
Nice sense of movement- I like the way that the entire surroundings have blurred away to silhouette the flower. Unfortunately, it looks like a lot of people took a motion blur approach, which could impact your score. 8
How gratifying it is to come across truly marvellous photographs like this one! It turns the tedium of a few hundred shots into a hunt for the Holy Grail. :-)
I have no reservations about any aspects of this impressionistic creation. I am elated and inspired by it. -M'excuse, I got carried away: the title 'describes' an all too obvious attribute -and this, perhaps, too mildly. One would expect the strong visual charge to be conducted by the title. (?)
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