Sweet Like Candy
Another cherry blossom from last year's visit to TV Asahi Cherry Blossom Alley at the Mauerweg between Berlin and Teltow. This year's cherry blossom has only just begun because we're having a fairly cold spring (with the exception of this weekend, but the cold will return tomorrow), and in a small street around the corner that is lined with lovely cherry trees, the blossoms are only just about to fully open.
I've photographed this blossom with the GRIII. The 28mm focal length GR lens is very sharp and it's also an amazingly good close-up lens, but at f2.8 as the widest-open aperture, it can be tricky to get a nice background blur. Here, the blossom was popping out amidst many other blossoms, so the backdrop was very busy and distracting. Since I liked how the blossom itself had turned out (apart from the fact that there's a good amount of blur right at the center – Sharpen AI dealt with that in a satisfying enough way so it's pleasant to look at, I think), I had to do something about the background. I didn't simply want to blur it out in LR or even completely remove it in PS because I liked the springy-fresh colours of the background, so I created two layers in PS, one with the blossom only, the other with the complete image, and opened the latter in Analog Efex where began to play around with the Zoom filter and the Dust and Scratches filter palette. As finishing touches I added the thin image border and hit the Primary Color sliders in LR. I hope you like this candy-coloured cherry blossom slider :)
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!
Sweet Like Candy
Another cherry blossom from last year's visit to TV Asahi Cherry Blossom Alley at the Mauerweg between Berlin and Teltow. This year's cherry blossom has only just begun because we're having a fairly cold spring (with the exception of this weekend, but the cold will return tomorrow), and in a small street around the corner that is lined with lovely cherry trees, the blossoms are only just about to fully open.
I've photographed this blossom with the GRIII. The 28mm focal length GR lens is very sharp and it's also an amazingly good close-up lens, but at f2.8 as the widest-open aperture, it can be tricky to get a nice background blur. Here, the blossom was popping out amidst many other blossoms, so the backdrop was very busy and distracting. Since I liked how the blossom itself had turned out (apart from the fact that there's a good amount of blur right at the center – Sharpen AI dealt with that in a satisfying enough way so it's pleasant to look at, I think), I had to do something about the background. I didn't simply want to blur it out in LR or even completely remove it in PS because I liked the springy-fresh colours of the background, so I created two layers in PS, one with the blossom only, the other with the complete image, and opened the latter in Analog Efex where began to play around with the Zoom filter and the Dust and Scratches filter palette. As finishing touches I added the thin image border and hit the Primary Color sliders in LR. I hope you like this candy-coloured cherry blossom slider :)
Happy Sliders Sunday, Everyone!