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Tangerine
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Tangerine

by Phil Pogledich

Gallery: Macro & Close-upPosted April 8, 2010397 views7 comments
Looking inside of a California poppy. I'm following Kathy's lead with the title, as the color here reminds me of fruit as well. If you take a moment to comment, I'm curious to know whether this works for you . . . composition, depth of field, etc. I see a lot of shots like this with different flowers and some are quite effective. I personally go back and forth on this one a bit.

Canon 5D, Tamron 90mm, f/4, 1/160 second (ISO 200).

Comments

7 comments
Comment posted by Walt Sterneman on April 8, 2010 at 10:59 AM
I really like it Phil. You have blurred the area surounding the pistol so well that it really focuses the eye on the center. Leaves no doubt what you are susposed to be looking at. And the color is grand.
Registered on March 24, 2010, 73 Posts, 1268 Comments
Comment posted by Kathy Odiorne on April 8, 2010 at 3:28 PM
Sweet image, Phil. I like the point of focus and where you've placed it in the frame, and the color is superb. :cool:
Registered on November 1, 2003, 211 Posts, 1471 Comments
Comment posted by John Kerr on April 8, 2010 at 10:26 PM
Looks great to me Phil. I too have been taking note of this style of shot and have been going to try it myself. Is there any technique you used to get the OOF area so washed out and smooth? Even if I shot at F2.8 I still get some FG detail? Once again though I think it looks great and I love the color. Well done.
Registered on October 28, 2009, 111 Posts, 1070 Comments
Comment posted by kayes on April 8, 2010 at 11:06 PM
Nice shot! Subtle and sweet :smile:
Registered on February 23, 2010, 51 Posts, 98 Comments
Comment posted by Phil Pogledich on April 9, 2010 at 1:06 AM
John: I'd say that for this particular shot, the technique was 80% in camera (simply a function of the aperture and being only a foot or so from the flower) and 20% in post. In post-processing, I played around with the clarity slider in Lightroom 2 and ended up setting it at minus 81, which is probably equivalent to applying Gaussian blur in CS4 (or whatever version of PS you use) at a pretty low level, like 5-10 pixels or so. If you're not familiar with the clarity slider, it basically adds or (as here) reduces local contrast, which can help create more of a creamy look for OOF areas. I then used the adjustment brush to bring the clarity back to the pistils to avoid losing sharpness there.

There's one other factor that I think has to be mentioned. I believe that using a full frame camera tends to result in less DOF as compared with a crop sensor camera, assuming you frame the shot identically in each (meaning, the crop sensor camera is positioned a bit further away from he subject), use the same lens at the same aperture, etc. I've never actually tested that to confirm, but I've always believed it simply has to be true . . . you can be a bit further away with a cropped sensor and still have a shot that's framed identically, but the distance necessarily gives you a bit more DOF.
Registered on August 24, 2009, 123 Posts, 3099 Comments
Comment posted by Mike Moats on April 11, 2010 at 1:31 PM
Hey Phil, very cool abstract feel. Like the subject peeking though the orange fog. :toast:
Registered on October 20, 2004, 892 Posts, 6324 Comments
Comment posted by Gary Yeoh on April 12, 2010 at 5:05 AM
Phil,
This is really beautiful. Congrat.
Registered on September 1, 2009, 588 Posts, 8184 Comments