Circle of Life
The beautiful bloom from this Hibiscus Tree sits among other buds at different stages of life. Soon this flower will wither and fall and another will take its ...
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The beautiful bloom from this Hibiscus Tree sits among other buds at different stages of life. Soon this flower will wither and fall and another will take its place.
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Aug, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken from my neighbor's hibiscus tree. I was living in Rockford IL at the time. My neighbor's were a wonderful older couple that bought the house back in the early 50's when the subdivision was developed and Kenny planted the tree for his wife who loved hibiscus flowers.Time
The interesting thing about this image is the fact that it was the first photograph I took when I decided to try my hand at photography. It was taken during the early spring. The time was mid morning it was still generally cold in Rockford IL.Lighting
Looking back on this image I think about how I would have approached this shot today. Now I usually try to take outdoor flower shots early in the morning just before sunrise and continue to shot until just after sunrise. This was my first photograph and I was more concerned with composition than lighting at the time. This was taken about mid morning around 10 am. I was lucky that it was a partly cloudy day that allowed me to wait for one of them to cover the sun while I took the shot. Yet, it was not planned at all.Equipment
Nothing really special. I was using a Point-and-shoot camera in a semi-manual mode. The focus was automatic and the rest of the setting where manual. I was focused more on composition since it was my first attempt with photography. There was no tripod, though I never take a flower shot without one today.Inspiration
I wish I would have taken a photo of the tree that day. It was early in the tree's bloom cycle and had very few blooms that had fallen off. Thus it was full of flowers and was a beautiful vision of nature. I was also moved by the story of how the tree came to be a part of my neighbor's life. Kenny was one of the best human beings that I have ever had the pleasure to know. He had a genuine love for life and people. The tree he planted for his wife when they bought the house -- it was her favorite flower.Editing
I did a lot of post processing on this. The normal clean up of the photo like filling in dead cell spots. Removing distracting elements, cropping out dead space and setting up a deep rich contrast using both normal contrast and color contrast. Basic color adjustments and then lowered the saturation. I also used a multi-level blurring technique to create the depth. It's a three layer gaussian blur effect where objects closer to the main subject have less blur than objects that are further from the main subject. I then used a radial motion blur to create the "dreamy" effect.In my camera bag
At the time I didn't have anything else other than my point and shoot camera and my photoshop C2 editor. It really hasn't changed much since then. I still use the same camera and my editor has changed to Affinity because Adobe decided to turn its editor into a Magazine subscription. I don't support anything from Adobe any longer. On1 and Affinity are great products and for other art projects I use GIMP and other open source applications.Feedback
I knew what I wanted to do with this the moment I saw the scene in the camera. That is when I saw the different stages of the flower that was around it I knew I wanted to tell the story of life. My advice is to open your eyes and mind to the story that is in front of you. You may have a planned shot in your mind for that moment; yet, there could be another story that you didn't think about. It doesn't mean you should abandon your planned event, just allow yourself experience the moment you are in.
