Hi Margaret. Thanks for your comments and thanks for posting your tweaked image. It's definitely an improvement on the original and it's good to get an idea of what result I'd get with a longer exposure or different lighting. I have a whole roll of this study in different light. As I was taking the pictures, the light was moving behind the edge of my window pane and this shot was taken just as the shadow was beginning to creep across the composition.
It's an interesting dilemma I have because as a multimedia designer, I work with Photoshop daily. It's very easy for me to scan an image and p'shop it, but as I'm trying to get back into photography, I feel a need to go back to 35mm film and back to a manual camera... back to roots, so to speak, and try to get well exposed and composed shots straight through the lens. It's going to take some practice! D
But your experiment made me think about how I can use Photoshop to see how I might improve my photography by playing with cropping, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, and removing bad parts with the stamp and smudge tools, etc. For example, you have removed the stick which sticks out from above the white flower, which improves the composition immensely!
Thanks very much for your comments, help and inspiration! I will certainly do what you have done with my images in the future!! Great idea!
How lovely, the shapes of the petals are very nice and sharp, great droplets. Nice composition, I like the mood the slighter darkness gives, but bet these lovely orchids would also look lovely with more light. I was curious so decided to have a go, see if you like it Margaret
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