The Lupines on Green Mountain (edit)

D850, Nikkor18-35 at 18, 1/13 second, f22, ISO80, tripod, cable release.

Still working the lupines on our little mountain. I have never seen the flowers here this good.

Any commentary fair game for sure. Its been a while since I have used a wide angle in this way. I was grateful for the screen on the back of the camera that flipped up for focusing.

If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ‘ig’ and leave your Instagram username below.
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

Hi Kathy - This is such a pretty field of flowers. It looks like you have been fortunate to have a magical spring. I like the even distribution of lupine across the frame and think the processing looks quite natural. I might crop a bit off the left, as the area of brownish/green in the lower left corner is a bit distracting. Depending on how far you will go with processing, you could do a bit of color painting with a light green to eliminate a bit of the brown in that area. If you return to this spot, one other thing you could try is getting higher and looking down a bit more onto the flowers. That could help eliminate some of the things in the background (like the brown twigs in the upper right) and focus a bit more on the lupine themselves. Still, this is a lovely portrait of this field of flowers.

Sarah
Thank you for the critique. I did as you suggested with the color painting here. Would not have known how to do that but for the excellent article you posted yesterday - so thank you for that as well. Once I did the color painting, I decided to tweak some more, so created another layer using the lighten blending mode, masked it, then painted a little lightening at a low opacity into this. Revised pic is posted here.
Will try to find some more fields and use a higher angle. I did some at a higher angle yesterday but they were not ideal.

Kathy: Love the pano comp and the nice improvement in the repost. :+1::+1:>=))>

Kathy,

What a beautiful gathering of Lupine. Great job with the colors and processing (and even more so with your repost - Great tips from Sarah!)

Hard pressed to suggest anything else. Oh wait, bigger! I wish it was bigger. Oh well, I respect the sizes folks are willing to post.

Congrats on the EP!

Lon

Kathy, this is quite the collection of lupines. I think your pano crop works well and the improvement in the repost is good. Congrats on the EP.

I am sorry for the very delayed response, Kathy. I think your changes make a big difference in terms of cohesiveness and reducing distractions. Nice work!