Friday, December 14, 2012

Amaryllis – blooming today … GH2 and 14-140

Waiting for a download and build to complete, so I thought I would drop in this post.

One of my two Amaryllis plants is blooming as of this morning, and how! Two blooms opened already, two more to follow shortly on the same stalk. And a second bonus stalk!

The other plant just sits there with three leaves … booooorrrrrriiiiiiiing … Smile

I am starving the leaf-monster for water for a while. Supposedly that can jar a tired bulb into throwing up a stalk. We shall see.

The images were shot from about 6 or 8 feet away at full zoom (first image) and I chose a really soft presentation, trivially accomplished by sliding the “presence” slider fully left in Lightroom. I also sharpened the stamens a bit with the localized brush.

The pebbly glass surface in behind the plant is actually a window screen. It is within 6 inches of the plant so I am really pleased to see it look more like glass. The second shot is zoomed out a touch and no extra sharpening. Same settings otherwise.

Note …. the scene was dark because of the backlighting, so I used a curve to open everything up and left the white balance as shot, slightly to the warm side.) Lesson for the day … lift the middle of the curve to add “pop” to dull images … much better than the sickly, if realistic, darkness of images that include bright skies. The rat will know what I mean …

Panasonic GH2 + 14-140 G Vario Mega OIS  400ISO  f/5.8  1/80

Panasonic GH2 + 14-140 G Vario Mega OIS  400ISO  f/5.8  1/125

I timed the second shot to catch the FedEx truck going by. For no good reason other than I could Smile