I'm no great photo editor but I do like to play. When I take the camera out for a spin I shoot a ton of shots trying to find a good balance of light and shadow, color and composition. Generally I don't think "What a great Shot!". I figure with a little digital magic from one of several photo-editing software suites I might come up with something interesting and possibly nice to look at.
I saw these coneflowers while mowing the "north forty" the other day and figured they might be worth photographing. Mid-morning light with good contrast from daylight to shadow. Good configuration of individual blossoms and nice contrasting blue flowers in the background. I took about a dozen shots as I circled the threesome. I used an old Nikon 70-210 zoom adapted to my Canon. The telephoto opened wide gives a nice blurred background with shallow depth of field. Though the flowers were beyond their peak I figured I could use that to my advantage in editing. A nice enough picture but I wanted something a little more.
I first used the automated fixer in Photoshop elements,saved the new
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file and opened it in OnOne PerfectPhoto. This software is the perfect sandbox for me to play in as it provides many one click variables for many different looks. I wanted a kinda old artsy look and fiddled with several options til I was satisfied and here you see the results. Nothing out of this world but I like it and for me thats what counts.