Friday, December 25, 2009

Orton Backlighting

First off, Merry Christmas (or happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever thing you celebrate this time of year) to everyone! Hope your holidays are lovely.

Anyway, this picture was taken the same day as yesterday's picture. It's an indoor macro shot right up against the window out into the lovely cloudy light. This gave the flower some cool back lighting, but I had to overexpose the background to avoid silhouetting the subject.




click to enlarge, or see it on Flickr
Aperture: f/2.6
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 80
Handheld



I'm actually pretty happy with the lighting in the background—it makes the photo look almost like it was shot in a light box. I wish I could have done something about the leaves and window thingies cluttering up the background, but I don't think they're too terribly distracting.

As you may have guessed from the title, a subtle Orton Effect was applied. I'm liking this effect more and more the more familiar and comfortable I become with it, especially for flowers. As this was taken handheld, it wasn't as perfectly clear as my macros with tripod usually end up, so the Orton Effect also helped hide the minute amounts of camera shake.

2 comments:

  1. I've heard about orton effect. It said that it combine two images, one in focus and the other one out of focus.
    Did you take two images or use a single image and then take it to post processing?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Merry Christmas to you as well.

    This would be a tough shot to get right. You did it well.

    I think you're right about the vignette in my photo for Christmas eve.

    ReplyDelete

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