Does anyone know what kind of flowers these are? (Elegant tarweed) & reworked

Reworked …

Description: These flowers only come out in the early morning and then close up as soon as the sun gets things hot.

Specific Feedback Requested: Anything

Pertinent technical details or techniques: Nikon D3400, 300mm, 1/640, f/6.3, ISO 400, cropped to 8x11

Is this a composite? (focus stacks or exposure blends are not considered composites)

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Google Tarweed. That may be what you have here but some of the pictures for it don’t look right. I’ve seen what you describe, with disappearing blossoms, in far northern CA and the natives call it Tarweed, but I’m not sure that’s accurate.

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Hi Vanessa,

Your plant is known as elegant tarweed. It is a variable species that is classified in the genus Madia. Your composition is nice and the yellows look good too. The pattern of the other yellow flowers in the BG is another nice feature in the scene. Well done…Jim

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Thanks @Jim_Zablotny for your feedback on the image itself as well! I’m so glad to know what it is! I was trying the Google image search and it kept coming up with sunflowers of all things! So it sounds like between @Diane_Miller and you I have 2 votes for tarweed and more specifically elegant tarweed from @Jim_Zablotny our resident plant and insect specialist! Thank you! It’s a really neat flower it reminds me of something in a high desert environment.

Nicely done Vanessa. I like the composition and the softness all around the main flowers. Ideally I’d like some more room between the sharp flower on the left and the OOF one next to it. The midtones look a little flat here as well so maybe have a go with the curves panel in Lr and lift them just a little bit. You could also try to clone some of the yellow or green OOF vegetation over the light/white bit of grass on the far left. The desktop version of Lightroom has a clone option for the spot healing tool. If the tablet version allows this you would take a sample of the area you want to paint over the grass and then brush it on. You can change size, feathering and opacity to really finesse it. Just a thought.

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Nice use of selective focus here, I like the repetition of OOF shapes in the background. I agree with @Kris_Smith about the midtones being a bit flat, so some added midtones contrast would help here. I also think a slight crop from the top would help direct more attention to the in-focus flowers.

If you ever want to identify flowers or other plants, try uploafing a picture of it to this website.
Doing that with your images returns a 99% probability that it is Common Madia, as @Jim_Zablotny said.

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Thanks so much @Ed_McGuirk for the info! I never knew about that website, it looks really great and user friendly! Thanks for the feedback on the image as well. So if I understand correctly are the midtones, that @Kris_Smith refers to quite often, not just in this case, the same as the contrast slider? Is that how I work on the midtones? I’ll go back in and try working with it again and doing the suggested crop as soon as I get a chance today! Thanks again!

Thanks @Kris_Smith for looking and your feedback. Are the midtones the same as the contrast? Because I don’t have a midtones slider in the Lightroom I have. I notice you mention those a lot and I’ve tried to get information on it and don’t seem to be looking in the right places! I’ll try some of your and @Ed_McGuirk suggestions on it as soon as I get a chance! Thanks!

The best place to manage the tonal range is with curves -

If you click and grab anywhere along the line you can shift the intensity of the tonal range. If you place little marks on the line, you can bend it like crazy -

You’ll be amazed at the changes you can make to your image with only a curves adjustment. And since it’s Lightroom, you can always reset it and try again.

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That’s funny @Kris_Smith , because the Lightroom that I have doesn’t even have this but the other one I had Pixelmator does and I was starting to use it with success before thinking that Lightroom would be better because it’s what everyone uses. I’m going to try it in Pixelmator and maybe drop Lightroom for now as I haven’t been too impressed at least for the iPad.

@Vanessa_Hill Lightroom for the iPad does have curves adjustments. When you use the edit panel on the right side, open the “Light” pull down and look for a little square with a curve inside. The curve has dots at each end. It’s on the same line as “Light”, and jus left of the “band aid”.

Below are four circles. White - for overall adjustments. Red, Green, and Blue for each of those channels. Along the bottom of the panel are pointers to set the white and black points and make global adjustments.

Here’s a screen shot

It’s not as intuitive as Lightroom Classic, but with a little bit of playing around you learn the system. I’m sure Lightroom Mobile will advance and we’ll be able to use curves with more features.

Namaste

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Agree with Kris on this. And curves is available in Photoshop, Lightroom or ACR (as the Tone Curve). One of the best ways to add mid-tone contrast is within the LR or ACR Tone Curve in the Develop module. You can add mid-tone contrast by making a shallow S-shape in the curve, pulling up on the right side (brightening lights) and pulling down on the left side to darken darks. You can either do this directly on the curve like Kris illustrates, or by moving the Ligths and Darks sliders underneath the curve.

Here is a screen shot illustrating how this looks in Lightroom on your image. I have the Before/After of the image with some mid-tone contrast added, and what the curve/sliders look like.

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You are getting serious enough with your photography that an investment in a laptop and the full version of Lightroom would really help you to advance your processing skills. Your compositions and image creatvitiy have shown good progress here at NPN, the thing that is holding you back is the limited ability to process with LR for IPad. Whether you go with full Lightoom or something else, you need more robust editing capabilities in your software. And more folks here use full LR or ACR than Pixelmator, so you would get more help from many of us with LR/ACR.

Oh my word! Thank you so much for showing me this @paul_g_wiegman! Just when I was about ready to throw in the towel! This is awesome! I’ve never had the classic so I have nothing to compare it with.

Thanks so much @Kris_Smith and @Ed_McGuirk for all your help! Finally between you guys and @paul_g_wiegman I see where the curves adjustments are in my Lightroom app! So, I think I was able to bring up the mid tones and also I ended up cropping maybe a bit more than what Ed had in mind but it enabled me to avoid having to do a hack clone/or brush job, I’m not so great at that yet,…

You can target light tones by playing with the right s side of the curve, and darks by adjusting the left side. Midtones are in the middle.

The classic approach to adding contrast, midtone or otherwise, is to make the S-shape in the curve. @paul_g_wiegman illustrates how to make that S-shape in LR for Ipad. This increases the slope of the curve in the middle, and the steeper the slope of that adjusted curve, the higher the contrast is.

@Vanessa_Hill I did a little bit of checking and there is only one book covering Lightroom Mobile - at Amazon

There are other functions in both Lightroom and Photoshop Mobile, you have to dig around. Some of the buttons in Photoshop Mobile have “added later”, so it looks like they are moving forward.

As you move along in this adventure, gear doesn’t automatically give you better images. Stick with you naturally intuitive eye and let your imagination soar.

Namaste

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Thank you very much @paul_g_wiegman for your kind words. I really appreciate it. I don’t have photoshop but I still have a lot of tutorials to go through in the Lightroom ap itself. I just have to force myself to watch them!

If you have the Clarity slider, it is a midtone contrast adjustment. Curves has more control but sometimes it can give a needed punch – it’s almost like a sharpening with a large radius, similar to high-pass sharpening in PS. But it can look harsh if overdone.