Not exactly what I was hoping for, as it has a loooonnnnggg way to go to match Nuzzer's Free Study:
I had scrolled through about the first 30 pages of the archives, picking out possibilities. Then my wife called me about an article in the local paper about the guy who planted 60 acres of sunflowers nearby. So I searched the archives again for a sunflower.
Unfortunately, it was late evening when we arrived, do my sunflower is backlit, as opposed to Nuzzer's front lit masterpiece.
This is the first time I have ever used HDR and tone mapping. I'm not really a big fan of it. I'm not sure why I chose to do it. I guess you should try everything at least once. I hope I did okay.
One RAW file, saved as five exposures (-2, -2, 0, +1, +2), and merged in Photomatrix and then tone mapped.
Opened in Photoshop CS2:
Shadow/Highlight
Levels on the entire image
Levels for blue
adjust brightness
Noise Ninja twice
USM
cloned out the edge of another flower and a weed
burn the sky and the leaves
crop
resize
Perhaps a bit overdone. I wasn't going to enter it once I got done editing, but I figured that I spent the time, I should enter. Prediction...mid 5's.
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You have some nice color tones that are vibrant and rich hues in this composition. Details and sharpness are really good on this capture. The main flaw I think that takes away from the beauty of this photo is that backlighting on your main subject. The shadows on the petals really do call attention to the flower BUT they are distracting and more importantly we don't get to see the lovely details of texture on the flower petals. A front lighted sunflower would have been a better subject for the light would play evenly across your subject showing us more details in the textures.
I really like this shot as a portrait of a sunflower. Unfortunately it's not a good representation of Nuzzer's shot in my opinion. His shot seemed to capture a lot more depth and feeling into it. This comes across as just a very good photo of a sunflower. I hope that makes sense?
The leaves seem to mimic my shot well and the fact you've got the sunflower so that the petals are not all fanning out. The colours don't seem as saturated, especially the blue in the sky. The back-lighting on the stem is great.
I'm giving you a 10 just for choosing one of mine to emulate :)
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