Jun 19
Immovable objects
It has been a really windy day. I tried some flower photography and I succeeded surprisingly well, helped by the relatively protected site and then just simply waiting for a lull in the wind. But it is also possible to use wind to your advantage and produce motion blur on purpose. I even experimented with second curtain flash but I guess the built-in flash is not made for the job. I think I will stick with natural light photography… I’m only posting this to illustrate how bad I am with the flash. LOL!
This gave me an idea though, so at editing stage I took one of the worst motion blur images plus a sharp, un-flashed image, then cut the sharp flower and layered it on top of the blurred one, applied multiply on the flower layer and now it looks a bit better… well, marginally. Just don’t look too close, I did a quick job with the selection and didn’t bother to tidy it up:
Playing with the flash is only fun so long and I was tired of the wind as well. Buildings and rocks were just about the only things that didn’t move in the wind, so I headed to the hembygdsgården and set up shop in front of my favourite building there - with wind blown ferns in the foreground. Out came the polarizer again and I stopped down to get an exposure of 1 second to produce motion blur in the ferns. I’m glad to say that this approach worked a whole lot better than my flash experiments! When I was editing the images, I decided to try the Orton technique to enhance the effect and I must say that I like it. As long as the weather continues windy like this, I will be doing more experiments - digitally!
I think that flash is not to be used with plants. If not so, convert me.
Orton technique was new to me! Well, I have seen the results many times before, but hadn’t known how they were shot.
The last picture is ethereally beautiful! Very nice work!
I think that flash is not to be used - full stop! Well, that’s just me. But seriously, a ring flash would be useful and I have often considered getting one. But then I just can’t bother.
The problem I have with the Orton technique is that I will soon use it too much. I want to try it on almost every image but that would make it lose its charm. It’s like any effect, works when used with care…