For the past several months, along with a good friend in India, I’ve been trying to capture photos of flowers. As I walk around, and I observe something especially colorful, or just an interesting shape or pattern, I usually take several photos of it trying to optimize my goals:
- a) include flower and background “green”.
- b) exclude anything else, one way or another
- c) use enough depth of field so that the most important parts are sharp
- d) also use depth of field to blur out anything else
- e) time of day - it seemed obvious that direct sunlight would be good, except…
- f) …don’t allow shadows to become annoying
- g) I’m not sure how to do so, but I think it’s important that the colors represent reality
- h) decide how much of the “surroundings” should be included
- i) AFTER capture, how can I use the tools in PL4 most effectively
The only thing up above that is different from years ago is that last item, “i”, how to use PL4 to get me a better end result than other things I’ve done in the past. With such a wonderful control of color, I’m convinced that it can do work that is much better than what I already know how to do. For example, the sort-of-purple color in my photos looks too “flat”, while in real life, it is more “vibrant”. Can I use the PL4 color controls, and set them to a specific color, and ALL the purple color within the image would be adjusted simultaneously?
I’ll post two photos here from yesterday. I corrected most of my camera mistakes over the past few weeks, and the flowers are NOT in direct sunlight, which I think is good, but I’m wondering how I can make these images more like photos I see in professional magazines. One option I’ve thought about, but not tried, is using some kind of flash to illuminate them better - but then I get shadows, and other unwanted side effects. Maybe people can accomplish this from within PL4 ?
L1002168 | 2021-01-24-M10 boats at drawbridge.dng.dop (11.9 KB)
L1002174 | 2021-01-24-M10 boats at drawbridge.dng.dop (11.6 KB)