Blue Hydrangea in Clay Bowl

While visiting friends, particularly those who enjoy plants, it can become an opportunity to capture some different shots of common plants in different settings and occasionally new types you might never have seen before. This is one of the reasons why I always pack my camera and tripod in the car when I head out.

The people I was visiting out in the country always have a great garden with lots of flowers and I was looking forward to some great shots. The lady of the house had picked a blue hydrangea and lay the flowers in a handmade clay bowl and set on the patio table. Since these were in the shade it gave me perfect lighting conditions in the afternoon sun.

I took several shots and while I like the image above I am not sure that it will be the final definitive shot. The final selection and any reworking normally happens months later when I go back and review the set as I may have different approaches to bring out detail elements.

As I turned around I noticed a collection of other plants that provided interesting compositional material. There was a flower with this brilliant orange petal and a black center. The orange colour was almost too bright to look at, as it seemed to glow. With the camera I could not catch the surreal orange vividness. Therefore in this shot I opted to bring out the details a little more. I noticed that when I converted to sRGB from aRGB that some of the orange was lost and I had increase the saturation a little as well as moving the hue a little to the red as the conversion had brought out more yellow.

There was this other interesting purple flower in a pot that with use of a shallow DOF I could bring out the soft patterns in the background.


















When you visit friends especially those who enjoy plants don’t forget to bring your camera and tripod.

Niels Henriksen