Flower Photography

Beauty in Life and Death

Published: Sun, Oct 28, 2018
Written by GizellaN
2 Comments
Categories: Blog, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Photo Technique, Photography, Photoshop, Velvet 56
Tags: flower, Lephotographynsbaby, Velvet 56

Flowers make me very happy. Their sight and their fragrance make me feel in a way that not a lot of other living or not living things do. I admire their ability to attract my attention as well as of insects, I love how colorful they can be, and how my mood changes positively when I am surrounded with flowers.

A few weeks back I purchased some annuals for my backyard, including a Denver Daisy. Everything on this flower is very photogenic. It doesn’t matter from which direction I approach this beauty, it almost always gives me wonderful photographic results. In fact, I truly enjoyed their beauty after they passed their prime. It was a different kind of beauty, but I loved it nevertheless.

In order to portray the difference of the live floral beauty and the dead one, I used a slightly different post-processing technique. I created painterly images from all, but I used two kinds of color schemes; a warm palette for the earlier flowers and a much colder and dramatic one for the second set. One image I digitally hand painted. This is a technique that I am currently studying, and this was one of my practice pictures.

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Another Lensbaby Visit to the LA County Arboretum

Published: Wed, Oct 10, 2018
Written by GizellaN
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Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Photography, Photowalk, Sol 45, USA, Velvet 56
Tags: Burnside 35, LA County Arboretum, Lensbaby, Sol 45, Velvet 56

Yesterday I was able to meet another Southern California Lensbaby photographer, Rita. She lives about an hour north of LA, and I am the same distance south of it. We decided to meet half way in between, at the LA County Arboretum.

I was very excited about driving there because of the overcast. It is so much easier to take nice floral photographs on cloudy days. Unfortunately, as soon as we entered the arboretum, the sky cleared up. Although it wasn’t what I wished for, we had a beautiful, sunny day to walk around for a few hours.

There weren’t a lot of plants blooming, but the place was still very beautiful.

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LA County Arboretum Visit with my Lensbabies

Published: Sun, Aug 12, 2018
Written by GizellaN
2 Comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Photography, Photowalk, Sweet 50 or 35, USA, Velvet 56
Tags: Burnside 35, LA County Arboretum, Lensbaby, Photography, Sweet 35, Velvet 56
Smile! You are on camera.
Yesterday I made a visit to the Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia. It was another hot (89F) and sunny day, not the most ideal day for photography, but I still had a ton of fun. I took all four of my Lensbaby lenses and I ended up using three of them. I started out with the Burnside 35, switched over to the Velvet 56, and finally used the Sweet 35. Let me take you on a pictorial walk of the arboretum and also give you some of my thoughts about the lenses.
There are lots of different birds at the Arboretum, but what it is most famous for are the peacocks. There are over 200 peafowls leaving on the premises currently. These two were my favorite photographs of them from yesterday, and I prefer the Burnside photo over the Sweet 35.
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Same Subject, Different Lenses (Traveling Burnside Project)

Published: Sun, Jul 22, 2018
Written by GizellaN
No comments
Categories: Blog, Burnside 35, Flower Photography, Lensbaby, Lensbaby Traveling Burnside Project, Photo Technique, Photography, Sweet 50 or 35, Velvet 56
Tags: Burnside 35, flower, Lensbaby, Photography, rose, Sweet 35, Velvet 56

About a week ago a friend of mine asked me if I could demonstrate the different looks various lenses can create of the same subject – including the Burnside. I picked a rose in my brother’s garden for my subject, and used four different lenses: Nikon 35mm, Lensbaby Burnside 35, LB Velvet 56, and LB Sweet 35. Please don’t expect this post to be a complete test of the 4 lenses; my goal was to give a good indication about the various looks you can achieve. I haven’t done any post processing on the following images. I will show a few images from each of the four lenses, then later in the post I’l put them next to each other for an easier comparison.

First, I’d like to show you three images I took with the Nikon 35mm lens, which is an automatic focus, prime lens. I got as close to the subject as I could, which was about 10″ (click to enlarge).

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