Here’s my obligatory annual close up shot of a cone flower. It seems that just about every one of my Flickr photographer friends has a shot like this, most including some sort of insect – bee, etc. Here’s a small sampling…
…and so forth. In fact, a Flickr search on the term “coneflower” returns 10,411 images, many looking a lot like the samples you see here. I guess the cone flower’s inherent photogenic nature compels people with cameras to shoot them.
This year our cone flowers didn’t fare so well in the drought. They looked OK, but it was obvious that they weren’t happy. For the shot at the top of this post I decided to use a plaster texture from Flickr photographer Ghostbones. As usual, I added this as an overlay layer in Photoshop. I then added a mask for the flower so that the texture was only applied to the background. The image had a narrow depth of field, so there were no sharp details in the background to interfere with the texture.
Here’s my cone flower shot with a butterfly (moth, whatever)…
I had originally planned to add a texture to this one, too. However, combined with the pattern from the wings the image looked too cluttered with the texture, so I just left it as is, with a narrow depth of field and blurred background.
I guess next year I’ll have to be more creative when I do my coneflower shots.
I like what you got with the texture. I was taking some pictures of roses the other day in the yard. I started to post one to flickr and then decided there are too many flower pictures lately.
Hi! I just found your blog through another one I read regularly. I like your flower photo, and the effects you used in photoshop. I wholeheartedly agree that sometimes there are just way too many of this type of image. I guess it is the inherent beauty of nature that compels us to photograph is, but who really knows?
Melba