Crocus Fixation Disorder :)

Late Afternoon Croceses

A funny story about these crocuses (croci?). When producing the previous post (a comparison of the Sony Webbie HD and a compact HD camcorder from Sanyo) I took two still shots of blooming crocuses in our yard and posted them to Flickr, since I wanted to be be able to link from the blog to the full resolution files. They immediately started to draw comments. People like flowers. People apparently like croci. So, of course, I had to go out with my real camera (Sony DSC H50) and take a few shots. It was late afternoon by then. The light was failing fast and I was pushing the aperture down for maximum depth of field,which lead to longer exposures than I should have been hand-holding. And, of course I had to try some extreme macros. The published close focus on the Sony H50 focuses is 2 cm, but I know from experience that it focuses closer than that. I tried a few shots where the leading petals of the flower were actually touching the lens so that I was shooting right down inside the blossom. Since there was a strong side-light by that late in the day, I was getting just barely enough light coming through the pedals to actually take an image with the camera inside the bloom. Though the stamens, when I took at look at the images on the computer, were not as sharp as I had hoped (despite spot focusing), there were some very strong images from a graphical standpoint. So I started experimenting in Lightroom to see what kind of interesting effects I could produce: softening the whole image and then popping the colors for an abstract, almost surreal look. That lead to some experimental selective luminance changes, using the HSL panel in Lightroom and the tool that lets you chose individual colors in the image to alter directly. I pumped up the luminance of the orange stamens and surpressed the luminance of the purple veins. This is lead to images that were even more graphic.

Surreal Crocus

A reader, when I posted the image on my Pic of the Day blog, commented that she could see it wall sized and hanging over a black leather covered bed. Yup. With fake fur trim, stainless steal and glass bed-side tables and lava lamps. Just the thing.

This image was even more popular on Flickr.

Still, for my own satisfaction, I needed to get the same effect with a more realistic image…one where stamens were critically sharp. That required more light, so the next morning, as soon as the sun was fully on the crocus bed, I was out there on my hands and knees with the H50.

Real Crocus Macro

In this image you can see the polen pores on the stamen. 

Of course I took a lot more shots. With such an interesting subject how could I not.

Crocus Chalice

Crocus Is In

And finally, I had to do a little video.

Of course the croci are still blooming. This might not be the end.