We enjoy many roses in our gardens and the four bushes of pink by the stairway show their stuff all the Summer season.
I’ve been wanting to set a tripod with camera next to a particular bud and take pictures as it opened, as it developed into full bloom, and finally on October 3rd I got around to doing just that.
Here’s what happened….. the process took two weeks.
The image on the far right happened on Oct 17, two weeks to-the-day later, and even then the bloom was still not fully open (short days of October I guess). The next day, the 18th, the rains began and stopped my whole bloomin’ (pardon the pun) process. I had to quit. Ongoing rain just “kills” these tender blossoms.
Here’s what I did to capture the sequence…… It’s fairly simple:
- Make sure to use exactly the same perspective (I kept the tripod in place all the time – Carlene and visitors walked around it for the time),
- focus sharply,
- use identical aperture settings to keep the backgrounds similar and out of focus.
- and most important… make sure the light conditions are very similar so the camera will make the color shading and backgrounds appear alike and coordinated.
- I then combined the five images into one using Photoshop CS5.
Just some side notes concerning the focus… check the aphids on the #1 shot, the closed bud, (click on the image to fill your page); I sprayed for them immediately after the shot.
And… the first two images were perfectly exposed and focused however the backgrounds were considerably lighter in color than numbers 3, 4, and 5 (I couldn’t re-shoot them) and so my only solution was to isolate the respective flowers and darken the backgrounds in post production.
Hope you enjoy the compilation. I sure had a fun time doin’ it.