Spring has Sprung

Spring is an excellent time of year to go out and about in our neighborhood in Sedona. Color is starting to splash itself in the form of flowers in many areas. Watching for the cactus to start popping their colorful blooms out of their calloused, thorny, green shells.

In the meantime, some spring blooms have hit the street.

purple and lavendar flowersPurple Robe flowers that were crawling out from under a fence. In the post-processing I dipped into Skylum’s Luminar 2018 Jupiter version. I made a copy of the layer then opened Luminar. This allows for adjustments to be made ‘after the fact’ using a mask.

purple robe flowersAnd, of course, I’ve got to play a little. Moving the camera in different directions with a bit of a slow shutter speed can lead to some exciting captures.

flower stripe background imageOf course, then you can take that to an extreme with time exposure and faster movement. This could be utilized as a background or for an album design element

plaid flower backgroundUsing Photoshop, we can get a bit more depth and dimension by replication the layer, rotating it and changing the Blend Mode of the top layer.

flower plaid background imageWhich give lots of options as many Blend Modes give other versions that feel different

And as Russell Brown says, “But, wait there’s more!

flower background optionsHere the Layer is rotated, and a drop shadow is added.

I think you get the idea. We can take a simple shoot with a few flowers and with the help of a little imagination while making the photographs and adding some spice in post-production there are many variations on a theme.

All images were captured with the Lumix G9 flagship stills camera and the 100-400mm Leica Vario-Elmar f4.0-6.3 lens a combo that is becoming very familiar to me. The more I use the G9, the more I like it!

Yours in Creative Photography,       Bob