A jumble of hydrangea

It was literally a jumble. This is a huge hedge about 5 ft tall and 20 ft long, and I went nuts trying to find the best cluster of these tiny blossoms. There was a breeze,too, and I had to wait for the brief quiet spells and try to block it with the diffusion screen.

Specific Feedback Requested

All comments welcome!

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
Canon R5, 100mm macro, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO 250. (No idea how that came up, but I had been shooting video and maybe it was left over from that?) Focus bracket of about a dozen – I had it set to 20 but didn’t need the whole stack. Thanks to @Kris_Smith’s tutorial, I finally tried editing in Zerene to choose some areas to make softer. Then I found more after I got into PS so did them by hand by masking from a blurred layer. Then a little Clarity added to the center areas. Slight crop from the right.

Wow, nice. The subtle deterioration of the individual blossoms is interesting. I bet that it’s harder to detect on the whole flower head. The shades of blue to purple are also really nice here. Hydrangea isn’t a favorite of mine, but this is a terrific little slice of it.

Diane, you have that knack of discovering beauty in imperfections. The image is delicate with colour and form. I think you’ve found the perfect cluster of flowers. Of course, wonderful post processing.

I have never seen a hydrangea hedge 5’ tall and 20’ long!

Thanks @glennie! I need to do a wide angle shot of it. It grows alongside the house of our younger son-in-law’s parents, along with a wonderful group of succulents. They have a jade that has been over 6 ft tall, but they keep cutting it back. I did some stacks of some of the jades that are in pots – will try to post soon. They are on the coast in the village of Bolinas, in an incredibly mild climate area.

It is indeed a jumble!

Hydrangeas have such interesting flowers, and your time searching was well spent. You found a congregation from youth, with fresh, nearly perfect petals, to elderly showing their age.

I like the pivotal placement of one senior citizen with a young adult ready to take center stage. Vignetting with soft-focus instead of +/- exposure works very well.

Namaste

Diane, I know I would have passed this over if I had come across it. I just prefer “floral peak” and that’s my bad. Because this is really a great image showing the lifecycle of flowers in glorious fashion. I think you used just the right amount of images for the stack. Any more and you might have lost the focus on the subject. Nice work.