P is for Perfectly Purple Pasque Pulsatilla

Steve and I went shopping the other day and I had my camera with me. There was a garden center so I went around happily capturing the beautiful flowers, and when I came to this one I stopped and gawked. WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PURPLE FLOWER!!

This flower was a bit of a challenge to process. The focus was just what I wanted, showing the fine detail of hairs, stamen and anthers. The narrow leaves falling away into bokeh with the glow of light was working too and the color was also right. But the background out of camera....it was too close in value to the flower and took attention away. I tried a few things...making the background really light to make those petals pop...but then I lost the hairs, which are one of my favorite things about this blossom. I could make it go to black...but then the leaves looked horrendous and also, there are a couple of places in this image where the hairs are not on a dark background, and they looked awful. So, I tried darkening as much as I could get away with...and that worked. It's not perfect and I'd really like more separation between the flower and the background, but considering the fact that I took this picture at a gardening section in a store's greenhouse, surrounded by other plastic potted plants, I felt a bit victorious with this result. :)

By the way, here's a search on ipernity for Pasque flower, and you can see some of the incredible results when there are better conditions! And also, I didn't know that this flower is very uncommon in this color! ipernity Search:Pasque

Explored on May 17, 2014. Highest placement, #1.