Janet Brien's photos with the keyword: scouler's hawkweed

I like the way this stem created a natural frame with one glowing blossom leaning out to the sun! :)

Isn't it fun to play with depth of field to create some fun bokeh?

2 more pictures in notes above! :) Here is a lovely hawkweed blossom with others in bokeh behind. I knew this picture would be fun to play with, so...I did! Please roll your mouse over the picture to see the two other versions I made! :D Which do you like the best? (if any! :D)

If you've been visiting my stream for a while, you've probably noticed how much I love taking pictures at angles that are not common. This is a favorite, which is a near-side angle, focusing on just the petal edges and letting the rest of the flower drift away into bokeh. It's a bit challenging to get right. Too much depth of field and the rest of the flower is too clear. Too little depth of field and you don't get crisp focus on all the petals you're highlighting. It took me about half a dozen pictures to get this right, partly because there was a breeze and these flowers are on very long stems that never stop moving! Hilarious that I got it! :D The background was a solid, soft beige and I thought it would be perfect for a texture. I used to get all my textures over on Flickr but I just can't do it anymore...it's so slow over there, it's stupid. However, I'm delighted to say that ipernity has a couple of texture groups which offer free textures too. There are also many fun texture-based groups here as well if you want to learn more about this! Texture groups on ipernity Here's some technical information about how I created this picture! The texture I found was made by the extremely talented KaySeeArr and this is the image: #13 - FaceOfSol... . I altered the texture mostly by desaturating it to get closer to the beige background, and then I applied a canvas texture to it as well. The texture is at about 50% opacity so that it blended into the background nicely, and the flower petals are sitting on a layer above the other layers! :D (To use a texture like this, which is made available to use at its largest size, choose the option "Download the photo (original size)". You can then open it in Photoshop and paste it onto its own layer in the picture file you're working on!)