I wanted to place a drop on the yellow area of the iris, but it kept rolling off so I decided to spray the flower with water and let the drops go wherever they wanted. The background is paper that I printed out of Photoshop. The light is from a window on the right. You can see the reflection in some of the drops. I used a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens with a 12mm extension tube. I started out with a raw file and worked with it in 16 bit mode in PS CS. After cropping, I made a slight adjustment in curves, did some minor cloning to remove distractions, and sharpended with Intellisharpen.
Statistics
Place: 3 out of 139 Avg (all users): 7.4834 Avg (commenters): 8.8462 Avg (participants): 7.4253 Avg (non-participants): 7.5625 Views since voting: 6888 Votes: 151 Comments: 42 Favorites: 25 (view)
This is a gorgeous image, as someone stated below I thought this was a winner as well until I looked a bit closer at the challenge. Now by the letter you were in the rules, but in the spirit we all know the centerpiece is not the water but the beautiful flower. This is one of the prettiest flower pictures I have seen in quite some time, and I am so pleased to see it garnered a ribbon to boot. I find it somewhat irritating that people have such a lowly view of one of the most photogenic objects for macro, flowers are simply amazing. I liken this to people who would have a lowly view on the female form because they are as plentiful as flowers as well, so I would say bahh humbug to the flower naysayers. At least one can look into the ratings and see you have some very impressive numbers with not a single comment below 4, that makes me feel a little bit better, but still I can't reason the skill and overall quality to be any less than a 6 from even the people who don't care much for flowers. ahh ohh well, I guess there are the hyper critical crowd who think beauty is a measure of comparison to something "different" I find beauty and different to be very different from one another, and if I were to rate this it would have a 9 or possibly a 10 (I have a sort of thing for flowers that aren't living at home in the garden) and well I think would be robbing people of the chance of at least a tie in comparison. There is so much that is beautiful to capture in an image in this world, and I find the 10s a little too synthetic for my liking ;) lack of perfection to me is what makes perfection if that makes any bit of sense to you :) and the fact the droplet kept falling to its natural home made this perfect to me, even if that was not your intention as you were caressing droplets onto the lovely petals. Wonderfully executed droplets on a most gorgeous specimen of a flower.
Thanks to all for the votes and the wonderful comments. It is a big thrill to win my first ribbon! To dsidwell, I had planned to go the florist to get a couple of Gerber Daisies but decided to try the grocery store first. I was lucky to find these beautiful Irises there. Thanks again!
Where are you finding iris this time of year? Lovely shot. Lighting is just right. It doesn't draw attention to itself, but still manages to give shape and form to the bloom and water drops.
I really love the colours of this picture. Also, it´s really well focussed, but I´m not sure that it meets the challenge, but I have to recognise that it´s a beatiful picture.
Great contrasting of colors. They work very well with each other. Focusing is excellent. Would like more emphasize on the water droplets. They almost blend into the petals. The highlights on the droplets aren't enough to help them pop out of the shot.
This is beautiful work. I love the color combination and the gradient background. The yellow on this iris stands out beautifully. I also enjoy the brilliant detail. Excellent shot :)
The photo is beautiful - colours, composition - but very few water here. I am in trouble when I have to vote, because as a flower photo, I love this very much! As water, well... as the main subject is the flower, I think water should be accented more.
Iris Drops
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