I stopped by Walmart to pick up a few things a few days before Valentine’s Day and this potted Tulip in the entry area caught my eye. As I had no plans for a field excursion this week I thought I might as well take it home to pose for me. I wasn’t that excited about any of the Raw images but after post processing I came up with this and thought it wasn’t too bad. So, what I did here was blend two images shot at f2.8 and f16 so that the flower would be mostly sharp and the background soft. I also borrowed a trick from Mike Moats of printing out a blurred green background which I hung up behind the flowers to eliminate distracting elements.
I then took the blended image into Color Efex Pro and added a detail extractor, contrast color range, and glamour glow filter. Finally, I added a vignette to help focus attention on the flower. There is a little ghosting around the edges of the flower which I think is an artifact of the blending. Something I will have to work on in the future.