The plant is a large shrub or small tree (5 meters) native to India, southern China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This plant is photographed at Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, PA. Just like native milkweeds, it’s an important larval plant for monarch butterflies. The flowers are used to make leis.
Specific Feedback Requested
My work at Phipps is for the Marketing and Horticultural Departments, so the photographs have a definite purpose, and that has to be considered when making the images. They are used for social media, websites, brochures, signs in the Conservatory, and publications.
That said, I would like to have comments with those end uses in mind.
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
iPhone 12, 7.5mm, 1/100, f 2.2, ISO 20.
The camera was in the “Portrait” mode. This sharpens the subject and blurs the rest of the image.
A person could easily float text on the right so I think for a brochure or display it would work well. Maybe a touch more saturation…it seems a little dull to me, especially compared to your lightbox work. When I saw it I wondered if it was in the milkweed family…the leaves and flowers are so distinctive to that group of plants. I like seeing the flowers in different stages of blooming. Nice find.
@Kris_Smith It’s in the milkweed family, but not the genus we find here in North America. The Conservatory uses this plant both indoors and out.
The flowers are, by nature are dull. These have a bit of a saturation increase.
I made some exploratory attempts before the plants went on display. They were awful! The leaves and flowers are thick and opaque, so it’s not a candidate for the lightbox.
Maybe we should post some of those flops at times to show that every session doesn’t generate fantastic images. Well, maybe not.
