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The ubiquitous rose photograph. Getting a decent photo of a rose takes a bit of effort with lighting, as it's easy to allow dark shadow areas between the petals to dominate and kill the mood you're trying to achieve.
Also, you have to be very careful with exposure, as it's easy to clip the red colour channel when photographing a red rose. For this reason I always use a three colour histogram on my camera, as the standard luminance histogram won't tell you if you've clipped a single channel.
For this photo I used window light as the main light source, with a white reflector positioned to bounce some light back into the shadows. It's easy to overdo the reflected light and create an image without enough texture or contrast. I took several images without changing anything other than the position of the reflector and this was the one that appealed to me most, with just the right amount of shadow emphasis.
To complete the image I used selective focusing and a vignette to draw attention to the centre of the flower.
Filename - rose 02.jpg
Camera - Canon 5D
Lens - 100mm macro
Exposure - 2sesc @ f22, ISO100
Location - N/A
This image - 800x533px JPEG
Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2
Comments - Tripod, mirror lockup and cable release used to prevent camera movement.
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