The title is a lame attempt at describing how this was lit. It means nothing nor is it a #2 of anything. I just wanted to convey that this shot was lit solely with a penlight in the dark and nothing else. I wonder if someone will go looking for Lily #1. lol
I first started out lighting the rear portion and then the front, but it was too well lit - sort of like a flash would have done. I didn't want a well exposed shot from front to rear.(that would have been too easy) I wanted a distinct separation from dark to light. It takes some doing to light a macro shot like this with a handheld light.
For this shot, I circled a penlight in a 360 degree rotation around the outside edge of the lily trying not to light the interior of the petals. Many of the shots cast some minor shadows on the petals due to not moving the light in a continuous fluid motion. This was the closest I got to not having those very noticeable shadows. I just wanted the stamen to pop as much as they could. PP'ing included tweaks in ACR, mostly levels adjustments, curves, brightness/contrast, selective sat/desat on yellows and reds, cloned two dust spots, sharpening a few times, resizing, border.
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Place: 42 out of 196 Avg (all users): 5.7791 Avg (commenters): 7.8000 Avg (participants): 5.5102 Avg (non-participants): 5.8862 Views since voting: 1247 Views during voting: 248 Votes: 172 Comments: 7 Favorites: 1 (view)
Soft and gentle lighting on a soft and gentle subject. A great demonstration of how to control all aspects of macro photography as the image does not have any shadows and the subject is sharp and crisp. A very worthy challenge entry.
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