Day 12 of the July 2011 Macro Challenge and I am afraid that I have succumbed to the obvious for a choice of macro photography today – flowers. I have been trying to resist the urge to photograph flowers and plants because I have taken similar shots many times before and I therefore wonder if I will learn anything new / benefit from this as a subject to focus on.
Never-the-less, it’s a relatively easy subject, and one you can focus on with little more than a shop bought bunch of chrysanthemums, so in pursuit of a lazy weekend I decided to make life easy for myself. It turns out, however, that there is still a lot to learn …especially when it comes to processing the raw files of the flowers. Balancing the colours with the sharpening requirements can be quite tricky – especially when using macro because every detail overlooked is detail lost. I found that by turning the picture into black and white I could start to see detail that was not evident in the colour shot – for example, dust on leaves, flaws in the petal, tiny insects. This is why I chose to keep this image in black and white – some people might think this a crying shame as you lose the incredible vivid fuchsia colour of this flower, but the nature of this macro challenge is about the devil being in the detail and I therefore think black and white is therefore the best choice for this particular image.