August Image

Title -Longwood Lily

How I did it - On a 4th of July trip to nearby Longwood Gardens, I spent part of a very hot afternoon "shooting the lily pond" with my D80.  Several lilies were nicely backlit including this one.  In PS, I cloned out a few small hotspots, burned in the leaf a bit, cropped, and added the border.

COMMENTS:

Mark Aksoy
Cliff Banks	I really do like this picture, such wonderful light. Only thoughts for improving would to clone out the bottom petal and reflection.
Bob Altman	What a wonderful shot. Your post work has made it look almost like a painting. The color and the lighting are great. I may have taken out the green in the lower left and placed the image on a totally black background. At this point in my eval of the images my wife, who is an accomplished watercolorist with paintings hanging in a gallery in Delray Beach, came into the room and totally disagreed with my eval. She said that the green gave the eye a place to move up to the flower. It also gave it balance with the shadows from the petals. Even though I agreed with her she is no longer allowed near me when I am writing my evals!
Bob Barley	Good colors. Nice composition. Pleasant image. The light and shadow on the petals creates interest. I might have tried another exposure using a reflector to fill-in the shadows to make it more uniform, but that might not have been an improvement. I like the image. Good shot.
Rene Ross	I like the image, nicely composed and love the color and border. I can't decide if the leaf enhances or detracts form the flower or not? Maybe a tighter crop? Regardless, Lovely Flower.
Margaret Boike	Being a gardener, I love photos of flowers, and this one is such a gorgeous color. I like the light source and the shadows it created on the leaf. There's still a small amount of lighter areas in the black background that could be darkened out, and some spots on the leaf that could be lightened/darkened to make them less noticeable. Nice photo!
Rich Krebs	Great image. That image needs to be on a wall. I like the whole thing.

Member Bio

Mark Aksoy- maksoy@aol.com - 1 star Biography - I have spent most of my working life as a research scientist - first as biochemist, and now a pharmacologist working in the Pulmonary Division of Philadelphia's Temple University Hospital.      My interest in photography goes back to childhood when my father let me click a few pictures with his Kodak Retina camera on family vacations.  It became more serious when I purchased my first SLR (a Pentax) and joined the Delaware County Camera Club in the early 80's.  I also bought a computer (a Commodore 64) about that time, but it never occurred to me that computers and photography might someday coalesce into one single endeavor.  I did marvel at my computer's immense 64K of RAM - more memory than I would ever need, I thought!       Yet, by 1995, my beloved Commodore was on the verge of becoming an antique, and I bought my first PC - a Pentium 90.  For 6 months or so, I had the fastest computer on the block!  This, in turn, led to my growing interest in digital imaging, which continues to this day.   I presently have Canon Powershot G5 and Nikon D80 cameras, plus a Microtek 4700 flatbed scanner, Dimage Elite 5400II film scanner, and an Epson 1280 color printer.  I continue to use a variety of imaging/graphics programs: Photoshop CS4 and plug-ins; Photomatix (for HDR); Bryce and Poser (for 3D work); plus Ultrafractal, Fractint and Tierazon for fractal designs.