Happy Hour

[purplehaze]

I caught this guy in my friend's backyard this afternoon with my Canon S95 in macro mode. I could have chosen a better focus point, I suppose, as I was at my narrowest aperture. Still, do you think it is passable? Comments regarding processing equally welcome.

ISO 160, 1/40, f/8


I could have stopped down the aperture on this one, but only if I boosted the ISO. Again, might I have chosen a better focus point?

ISO 100, 1/40, f/5.6

[Sahil]

Wow! Lovely details & Colours....
& I am so involved with Honey bees lately.
The client I am working for these days is the Asia's Largest exporter of honey. So its all about honey honey with me all the time

[Nihia]

Loved the flower texture in 2nd pic, but I wonder what a couple of larger water drops would have done for it? The bee might have looked more balanced nearer the bottom of the shot with more flower at the top. Great captures tho.

Nihia

[JohnC]

The bee looks more than passable to me .Macro mode on cameras isn't true 1:1 of course but still give very good results.

[purplehaze]

Wow! Lovely details & Colours....

Thanks, Sahil!

The client I am working for these days is the Asia's Largest exporter of honey.

How interesting! I love sampling all the varieties of honey. Does Asian honey come in different flavours?

[purplehaze]

Loved the flower texture in 2nd pic, but I wonder what a couple of larger water drops would have done for it? The bee might have looked more balanced nearer the bottom of the shot with more flower at the top. Great captures tho.

Thanks, Nihia. The water drops were "found", but I get what you are saying; a couple of large ones might have added another point of interest to make the composition more complete. As far as the bee shot, it is a crop and I did try putting the bee more towards the bottom, but it was not as pleasing to my eye.

[purplehaze]

The bee looks more than passable to me .Macro mode on cameras isn't true 1:1 of course but still give very good results.

Thanks, John. My bee certainly pales in comparison to the ones Tobias just posted. More incentive to get a true macro lens for the D90, but I am torn between that and a better telephoto than the one I currently have. Then, there is the fact that I have not yet "earned" the right to step up to either, as I still have a lot of learning to do with what I have.

[MajaMolly]

The colors are beautifully vibrant and the water droplets add that little 'sumthin' more.

[Sahil]

How interesting! I love sampling all the varieties of honey. Does Asian honey come in different flavours?

Various flavours. Our client offers many mono-flora flavours like Lychee Honey, Eucalyptus Honey, Mustard Honey, Acacia Honey, Organic honey & many more (of which I don't know English names ) along with blended honey.

[purplehaze]

Various flavours. Our client offers many mono-flora flavours like Lychee Honey, Eucalyptus Honey, Mustard Honey, Acacia Honey, Organic honey & many more (of which I don't know English names ) along with blended honey.

Cool! I will keep my eye out for them.

[Sahil]

Cool! I will keep my eye out for them.

[purplehaze]

The colors are beautifully vibrant and the water droplets add that little 'sumthin' more.

Thank you, Maja.

[jiro]

Very nice shots, Janis. Good details and excellent control on the colors. You certainly managed to composed the shot nicely here. Maybe, a little extra sharpening and a slight brightening of the central area of the flower would give it some additional "pop". That little Canon is really a good camera to work with.

[purplehaze]

Maybe, a little extra sharpening and a slight brightening of the central area of the flower would give it some additional "pop".

Thanks, Willie. Are your suggestions for #1 or #2, or both?

That little Canon is really a good camera to work with.

I do love it; the sharpness of the lens makes me pine for better glass for my D90.

[Lon Howard]

Two lovely images, Janis! The second one is hard to take my eyes off of, with those stunning lines and artfully blended tones.

[purplehaze]

Two lovely images, Janis!

Thanks, Lon.

The second one is hard to take my eyes off of, with those stunning lines and artfully blended tones.

LOL. Don't know that I can take credit for nature's art, though, come to think of it, I did play with that green part a bit. My first experiment with Aperture's colour adjustment brick that didn't result in a dog's breakfast.

[jiro]

Thanks, Willie. Are your suggestions for #1 or #2, or both?

Yeah, for both.

I do love it; the sharpness of the lens makes me pine for better glass for my D90.

We all are.

[jiro]

One possible edit on your second image, Janis:



I decided to rotate the image to make it look like it is inviting some more bees to come visit her.

Here's a version for the first image:



and another:

[purplehaze]

Love what you did with the first image, Jiro. Excellent. Did you do this in LR? With curves?

I struggled with the bee one for several hours yesterday and I think what I was doing was similar to what you have done in that the colour has gone somewhat reddish. Frankly, I did not like what was happening to the colour of the petals, so I gave up. I cannot deny that you have made the bee stand out brilliantly, though. I don't mind that the centre is now yellow. You have done a wonderful job with the centre, because it was not in focus and all I got was noise.

I'd be very grateful if you could tell me what you have done here, or post a screen shot of your adjustments.

I sincerely wish I could fly you up here for a week or two of intensive training in PP. You are a magician! Right up there with Mr. Wirefox! (Not to mention the late lamented robmarshall.)

[jiro]

It's more of a 20/80 ratio, Janis. 20% on Lightroom then the remaining 80% on Photoshop.

The upper midtones are a little dark for my taste so I adjust the Fill Light slider by about 27%. I decided to make the petals look softer so I adjusted the CLARITY slider to -20. I wanted to boost some more color but just a tad so I adjusted the VIBRANCE slider by +8. I need to tweak the color saturation and luminance more to give the image some extra "pop". I increased the orange saturation to +19, and the yellow to +85. For the luminance levels, I adjusted the orange to +14, the yellow to +43, the Purple to +22, and the violets to +5. These adjustments are all in Lightroom. Once exported to Photoshop, I added a new layer with mask using my Vivid Light technique to bring out some more extra contrast and detail on the petals. Then by selectively brightening specific areas, I can change the way the viewers look at the image by brightening up the areas that I want to viewers to look at longer. I slight vignette was added to the image, too. As always, my last edit would be adding a sharpened layer to the image and then apply a mask to this layer so I can select only which parts do I have to sharpen for impact. Basically, that's how I edit an image, Janis. Hope this helps.

The reason why I spent more time in Photoshop on the edit is because I know I need to use layers to arrive at the edit that I want. If only lightroom has that capability. Hahaha!