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Peripheries.

It’s a paeony and… [he checks briefly] … it’s not wet :)

 

Another experiment. I’d seen an image of a rose which I really liked. It had been processed in high key with a white vignette. I thought I’d have a go.

 

When the paeony flowers are coming out the buds are tight balls of convoluted petals. All the petals seem to have random edges which I find really quite interesting.

 

When I started this Flickr account I posted a similar image of a paeony bud (in pink) and it has proved my most popular image. I have no idea why. It’s not one of my particular favourites. And I certainly have no idea why it as invited to an erotic photography group - I didn’t like to ask :)

 

This is a macro covering about an inch in the centre of a paeony flower bud. The result of the processing wasn’t quite what I expected, but then it never is.

 

For the Thursday monochrome group.

 

Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image! Happy Monochrome Thursday!

 

[Handheld in daylight.

Developed in Capture One for tonal range.

Rotated and cropped to a 16:9 ratio to tweak the composition and get the widescreen aspect, in Affinity Photo.

Sharpened using Unsharp Mask and clarity. A balancing act to get a bit of detail but to retain the emphasis on the form of the edges.

Converted to B&W in Nik Silver Efex, with no toning or vignette. More balancing.

Back into Photo and then a curves layer to play with the tone and get a more high key look. More fiddling.

A very subtle recolouring (4% saturation) to add a little pink back in which warms and softens the image though you are not meant to notice :) (I tend to find pure B&W very austere and you lose a lot of the tonal smoothness because of the technical shortcomings in the digital format, which is why I like to tint a bit.)

A final teeter on the edge of everything with a bold white vignette to take out the detail on the edges.]

 

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Uploaded on August 1, 2019
Taken on August 1, 2019