Tag Archives: Cee’s Flower of the Day

Flowers

Between showers

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Yellow rose cover in raindrops, sidelit by the westering sun.
Yellow rose at golden hour.

A chance ray of sunlight lit this rose, making it pop from the surroundings.

Chiaroscuro

I continue my exploration of chiaroscuro.

This is a Renaissance painting using chiaroscuro:

Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600
Caravaggio, The Calling of Saint Matthew, 1599-1600

Directional light

I took these photos yesterday between rain showers. One typical feature of chiaroscuro is the light coming from a specific direction. In this case the sky was a mix of dark clouds and blue, when the sun hit a break in the clouds it came between some nearby trees.

Detail in the bright areas

Another feature is that the brightly lit subjects have a lot of detail. Since I wanted detail in the highlights I chose what some would consider an under exposure (I used the P mode and set the exposure compensation to -0.3) and made sure the depth of field was great enough to get the whole flower. The settings were F 4.0, 1/320s and ISO 100 the focal length was 8.8 mm (24 mm 35 mm equivalent).

High contrast between the lit subject and the dark surroundings (a.k.a., tenebrism)

I used Raw Therapee to darken the shadows without loosing detail in the highlights.

Moving the photo into the GIMP, I made a duplicate layer of the image, switched the duplicate to multiply blend mode, adjusted its opacity then used a tone curve on the resulting image to fine tune the contrast.

For Jez’s Water, Water Everywhere and Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Flowers

Bring me a rose in the winter time…

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A rose in winter.
Another view.

There is a folk song called “Bring me a rose in the winter time”.

Bring me a rose in the winter time,
When roses are hard to find.
Bring me a rose in the winter time,
I've got roses on my mind.
A rose is sweet most anytime, and yet,
Bring me a rose in the winter time
How easy we forget.

Bring me a smile when I'm far from home,
When it's hard to find.
Bring me a smile when I'm far from home,
I've got smiling on my mind.
A smile is sweet most anytime, and yet,
Bring me a smile when I'm far from home,
How easy we forget.

Other stanzas are:
Bring me a friend when I'm all alone....

Bring me a kiss when my babes are grown....

Bring me a love in my autumn years....

Bring me peace when there's talk of war....

By Ernie Sheldon

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.

Flowers

Flight of fancy

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When I took these on a frosty December morning, I had a fanciful thought.

This ornamental kale put into my mind the fairy godmother in the tale of Cinderella: was this the basis of her ball gown? The sparkles of frost could be crystals embroidered on the gown, the purple center the bodice, with the white trimmed with green outer leaves the elegant layers of skirt. It would be a suitable companion to a pumpkin coach.

For Cee’s Flower of the Day.