[Irma]

I took this pictures this afternoon. I didn't work any post processing in photoshop just cropped and worked my colors in lightroom.

#1



#2



#3



#4



Thanks for looking...

[Rabid Penguin]

Nice! the colour ones look almost like paintings.

[matthew]

Very striking. My favourite is the B&W -- they almost look like drawings.

[Irma]

Thank you so much for your comments RP and Matt...
I am so happy!!
That was the effect I was after with these pictures. They lack a bit of composition still, but now I can work my image sure that the effect is right!!

Thanks again...

[NT73]

I like the colour in the first one although the pic looks very soft.
The second is sharper but lacks the vibrancy of the first and I find the glass rim a little distracting. I would not know how to change it though.
The B&W are as matthew said, like drawings almost.

[aine-caitlin]

These do have a beautiful watercolor look to them. My favorites are #2 and #3. I like the glass vase showing in #2, and I like that the leaves on the stem are showing in #3.

[Irma]

Thanks so much for your comments NT, Aine...

NT
My idea was to work a bit with the out of focus part of the flower to give this drawing effect. That is why you might find it soft.

I think there is no way to crop the vase in #2 as it was meant to be in the composition. The thing that comes with a bunch of flowers is that if you include the whole vase there is no much detail of the flowers in the picture and if you leave it completely out, as a viewer you wonder where they were. I thought that includeing just the edge of the vase would give the idea and still have the detail of the flowers....

Aine, I am happy you liked the watercolor look. I was really just made with strong light and working with the colors...

[Toad]

These are all processing gems. The first and last would be my favs but all excellent.

[Irma]

Thanks so much Toad for your comment...

[NT73]

I didn't mean for you to crop the vase out. It is just the light on the rim of the vase that I didn't like.

[Zig]

Very, very good indeed; yes, I pick up Aine-C's comment re the effect: I think this sense of 18th/19th century watercolour is exceptionally captivating...and the "attitude"/composition works well(that vase does annoy me though!). I'm very hard to please as regards flower pics...your technique has done a marvelous job here. I'm also rarely actually inspired as such by peers (or myself), yet I most definitely want to have a go at the sort of thing you have done here. Just as an afterthought, I'm wondering to myself how to go about this in PS...maybe semi-transparent layer of Torn-Paper filter...?

[Wedding Shooter]

I love the last one Irma - the BW work better than the colour to my eye.

[Irma]

Thanks so much Chris for your comment...

Zig, Thanks so much for your comment...

Well I really don't know much about the torn paper filter. I think the effect work best when you have flat light and not hard highlight and shadows. Other thing is that all this pictures were taken in JPG unfortunately. I send my camera to sensor cleaning and they change the setting. I didn't know anything about this I realized they were jpgs only when I open my pictures in LR.

Here is the original, what I did in photoshop and the layers I used and the LR version of the same picture. In photoshop I desaturate first and then I go back to the background and work the rest of the adjustment layers so you can see how they affect your bw contrast.The idea also is to work with the colors of the original picture, I don't know if that is a good idea but to me works well.

Original




Photoshop version





Lightroom version.



If you wanted to see original size of any image, just let me know and I would send it to you by mail.

[wulinka]

wonderful shots irma!

I like the bw no.2.

in no 1 I could imagine slightly more vibrant colors for the blossom, like the colors in the "orginal" of your latest post.

In no 4 the contrast is slightly too stark for my eyes.

How long did you work on these? they are really well done!

Uli