Cardinal Flower

Gallery: FloraPosted August 17, 2011129 views13 comments

One of the most conspicuous flowers along river banks this time of year is the scarlet-colored Cardinal Flower. There was brief shower yesterday as I was out in my canoe looking for them, so I got some raindrops to break up all that solid red.

Too Much Red? I had some trouble getting detail out of the intense red petals. I finally kept the red from being blown out by dimming just the red channel in a curves adjustment layer. Have you ever had that problem, and if so, how did you solve it?

Canon 50D
Sigma 17-70
1/25 sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200
Tripod and release
12 frames stitched in CS5 <---<<< OOPS I mean STACKED in CS5.
(Thanks to Wayne W. for catching that.)

Comments

13 comments

Comment posted by Gary Yeoh on August 17, 2011 at 8:45 PM

Wayne:
The red really pops against the green bg. I often have issues with the red and I use vivezia without too much success. I think you way is more elegant. Also like the nature vignette in this image.

Registered on September 1, 2009, 588 Posts, 8184 Comments

Comment posted by scott lanz on August 17, 2011 at 9:00 PM

Very nice processing. The red looks good on my imac. For me, the raindrops make the image.

Registered on November 14, 2003, 840 Posts, 12902 Comments

Comment posted by Luke Ormand on August 17, 2011 at 9:31 PM

Wayne,

I don't know about upstate but on Long Island this is one of the most difficult flowers to find (naturally occurring plants anyway) and it's always nearly impossible to photograph due to its preferred habitat of marshes and mucklands. So, that makes this image all the more impressive to me. I love the drops of rain and the red is nice - it is a little centered though and I believe I detect a sharpening halo (most noticeable around the red petals on the LRC)

Registered on February 4, 2009, 1093 Posts, 7035 Comments

Comment posted by Pat Sampson on August 17, 2011 at 10:19 PM

Hard to beat that red against the green bg Wayne. I seem to have the best results with most flowers by underexposing them initially in the capture and then using the luminance, saturation and vibrance controls in LR. If the subject is red, bringing the red luminance up gets the exposure right but also desatures the red some and lets the detail come out - especially if I'm stacking and can use structure in the NIK suite without introducing noise. At least I think that's what I do and how it works. (smile)

Great mood in this.

pat

Registered on May 19, 2007, 953 Posts, 15989 Comments

Comment posted by Barbara Graham on August 17, 2011 at 11:04 PM

Oh, Wayne, how sharp and beautiful! The colors look great to me.

Registered on July 27, 2010, 1310 Posts, 5035 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Overacker on August 18, 2011 at 3:14 AM

Hi Wayne,

Wow, this just jumps right out of the screen at ya - it really pops. And honestly I don't think the red is too much. I mean, I might try and rescue some detail out of that channel - speaking of which, you know what may work is TK's Triple Play. Don't know if you have any of his masks, it might be interesting to see if his TP could pull out some texture in those petals. Regardless though, this is beautiful. The drops are of course a big plus for the image and the bg is sufficiently oof to really make these guys pop out from the bg.

Beautiful.

Lon

Registered on November 24, 2006, 521 Posts, 19147 Comments

Comment posted by Bob&Charly Nelson on August 18, 2011 at 8:01 AM

This bloom just pops out of the pictire Wayne. Superb work in my opinion.
Bob

Registered on October 27, 2005, 289 Posts, 4202 Comments

Comment posted by Charlie Baugh on August 18, 2011 at 4:52 PM

Beautiful blast of vibrant red and as already said the droplets give is wonderful life. Shooting from a canoe has it's challenges I'm sure. A tall, rather than wide perspective is a shot I'd love to see of these blooms, which I'd guess have a long green stem.
Great work, Wayne.

Registered on April 18, 2011, 329 Posts, 1985 Comments

Comment posted by Mark Seaver on August 18, 2011 at 5:02 PM

I'm jealous. I shot many Cardinal flowers images on two different days last week and didn't come close to anything this nice. Keeping the blue/white part sharp and not blown out is a real challenge. The red petals look great.

Registered on January 23, 2011, 1103 Posts, 17270 Comments

Comment posted by Ramamohan Pai on August 18, 2011 at 5:35 PM

Wayne, You handled those Reds admirably well

- to say they are tough to get right would be an understatement. Water drops as always add a nice touch too

. A very minor thing is that some petals show over sharpening - should not matter for the web version.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 550 Posts, 9037 Comments

Comment posted by Larry Lynch on August 18, 2011 at 7:10 PM

Love the dynamic color against the bg. Terrific image!

Registered on September 16, 2006, 773 Posts, 9940 Comments

Comment posted by Wayne Willison on August 19, 2011 at 12:30 PM

Plenty of detail here where needed, Wayne. But I don't understand what you've done; 12 frames stitched or stacked? In any case it really pops off the page. Nice one.

Registered on April 10, 2009, 292 Posts, 3967 Comments

Comment posted by Wayne Jones on August 19, 2011 at 11:51 PM

Finally checking back in after a couple of busy days....
>>>THANKS everyone for the comments, and especially to Pat and Lon for the processing tips; Luke and Ram, thanks for noticing my sharpening for Web problem. Looks like I need to modify the Web-reduction action that I saved.
>>> Luke, Mark and Charlie -- Since you are interested in this plant, take a look at this shot: They usually grow in sparse groups of 2-4 plants in the wood along river banks here, but this year after extended flooding, there was a red population explosion like I have never seen.

Registered on April 18, 2007, 953 Posts, 6435 Comments