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Early Magnolia
29 February 2024
The magnolia trees are starting to bud and blossom already. We attribute it the early phenomenon to leap year. Or all that rain. Still, it was a surprise.
Early Magnolia. Olympus E-PL1 with 14-42mm II R kit lens at 42mm (84mm equivalent), f5.6, 1/640 second and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
A neighbor has just planted a new magnolia so we were able to get a close-up of the flower just after budding without breaking our neck. And right next to the flower a hairy bud was posing for us, too.
Much as we liked the flower, the background left a good deal to be desired. It was a muddy brown.
So when we opened the file in Photoshop's Camera Raw, the first thing we did was convert it to a black-and-white image. Our vital signs immediately returned. We had breathed life into the image.
We played around with the image data for quite a while to get it to this point.
The general strategy was to use the Light panel to optimize the tonalities by making more of them Black and brightening the Whites. We got away with that because the subject is very high key and the background is mud.
Then we dropped into the Effects panel to Dehaze a tiny bit and add a vignette.
We were getting there but we had to use the B&W Mixer panel to darken the muddy background tones to various degrees. That finally gave the image the drama we were looking for.
It was actually refreshing to work in monochrome again.
Now we're tempted to see what this image looks like on Epson's new Legacy Baryta II paper, which has been sitting here for ages waiting for a review. But, being a leap year, we may get around to it now.