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Lens-Artists Challenge #301 – Floral

Bees at work.

This week, Sofia invites us to share our floral images. She doesn’t just ask for photos of flowers, though. She writes, “Let’s see Nature in all its glory and enjoy this beautiful time of the year. Let’s find different angles, play with post editing, get closer or further afield, find strange and unknown flowers and if you want to get some flower friends on the shot, that is allowed too.” You can read her entire challenge post here.

I will start by noting that I’ve already seen many responses to Sofia’s challenge, and the photos I’ve seen from so many are spectacular. By comparison, I see that I need some serious remedial work in floral photography. Some photos, like the one above, were processed long ago. I do not know much about plant identification, so I am trying online plant identification apps. Two different apps suggested this plant is papaver orientale (oriental poppy). Please correct me if I have it wrong.

A monarch on a thistle.

One of my favorite images is from a visit to a Minnesota state park. This monarch didn’t care that the flower he rested upon is considered a weed.

Bengal Trumpet.

This flower was on a vine in a park in Hawaii. I used masking in Lightroom Classic to highlight the subject, then inverted the mask and lowered the exposure in the background. This simple edit took only a few moments.

Flower garden at Lindenwood Park in Fargo.

Jez Braithwaite featured several lensball images on his blog a few years ago. Intrigued by the resulting photos, I ordered a lensball and looked for likely places to use it. Like the image of the Bengal Trumpet, I used a radial fill to mask the ball, inverted the mask, and lowered the exposure to completely darken the background.

Sunflower field.

In 2020, I had a “field day” with my camera at the golden hour, standing next to a sunflower field near Fargo, North Dakota. The state often leads the United States in sunflower production, and when it doesn’t, it’s second only to South Dakota. Other than applying a vignette, I did very little in post processing. The strong backlight from the sun did all the work in camera.

Scarlet Flax.

This image was captured in 2013. I have called them poppies for many years, but the plant ID app tells me they are scarlet flax plants. I added some background blur and a filter for this edit that gave the image a watercolor style.

Orchid.

I have an extensive collection of flowers processed to an almost monocolor image. The process is easy. The Color Mixer in Lightroom Classic and the Color tool in Luminar Neo have a Luminance adjustment for each color. I usually reduce the cool color sliders to the left to weaken or remove the color from the image. Once that’s done, there is typically no need to increase the warmer colors. In this image, I left several of the warm color sliders alone.

Hibiscus.

The hibiscus is Hawaii’s state flower. Well, that’s not precisely true. The Hawaiian hibiscus is the state flower. That species, the hibiscus brackenridgei, is a yellow hibiscus that bears the honor, but seven hibiscus varieties are native to Hawaii.

Lily.

I seldom process a flower into black-and-white, preferring a monocolor style if I convert to monochrome. This Lily, however, converted to black-and-white beautifully with the help of Silver Efex 3.

Floral collage.

I conclude my lens-artists response with this gallery of some of my favorite floral images. Many of these found their way to be framed and hung on our walls. Flowers display nature’s design prowess with color, delicate shape, and scent. Their beauty is inherently delightful but balanced by the flower’s fleeting lifespan. They remind us to cherish beauty and appreciate the cycle of life. I’ve posted several more of my favorite floral images to the gallery on Flickr. To view the entire gallery in HD, visit my Flickr site here.

Thanks to Sofia for a beautiful challenge topic this week. Last week’s Delicate challenge from Ann-Christine was a perfect lead-in for this theme. Next week, it’s my turn to host the challenge. I am looking forward to it. If you’d like to respond to the challenge each week, here are some tips to get started.

John Steiner

46 comments

  1. There’s just so much loveliness and variety in the floral world, isn’t there? My favourites here are your humble thistle and the sunflowers. Thanks, John!

    Reply

  2. So beautiful, John. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the responses for this challenge. There’s always something new, a different look on familiar flowers, it’s inspiring. And so it’s your post too. The sunflower photo is simply breathtaking, perfect in every sense.

    Reply

  10. Oh my, John, these are spectacular images. Thanks for sharing the editing you did. Like you, I use that technique to darken the BG in order to bring out the subject. I gotta that the Bengal trumpet, sunflower, and orchid photos are my favorites. Beautiful all around!

    Reply

  16. A glorious selection of flowers for the prompt. I adore the butterfly on the weed (thistle is a fun weed that the birds and the butterflies love to frequent where I live). Your post was fun to read what edits you chose to use or not use. I do wonder, how do you use the lensball and capture a photo at the same time? Do you hold it, do you set it somewhere and then take a photo?

    Reply

    • Thanks, Shelley. The lensball has a square “holder” that includes a standard tripod thread. If you look at the top of the photo, you can see the holder in that image. The holder appears upside-down because the view through the lensball is always upside down. In post processing, the image must be rotated to make it look upright.
      I don’t always take a tripod with me for the lensball. The flat-bottomed holder can be set on any horizontal surface. I have put it on bridge rails to capture the river below, or on flat stones. Once it is stable, I’m free to take whatever photo I am planning.

      Reply

      • You’re welcome. Thank you for the lesson on the lensball. I appreciate reading how you use it and what works for you. It’s a cool tool!

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