Tall Sunflower

Tall Sunflower

I have enjoyed showing the stages of the prairie dock this season.  I am now trying to do the same for the tall sunflower.  This, of course, is the bud just beginning to open.

Tall Sunflower

I loved this one when I finished optimizing it.  I soon discovered that it had problems when converted for the web or for printing.  I am sure it looks to you as if it is overexposed but the original capture was not over exposed.  The color seems off but, again, it was not originally that way.

My camera, EOS 7D, captures the images at 14 bits per channel and in Adobe RGB 1998 color space.  When I convert the image for the web I must change the bit depth to 8 bits per channel which means less colors.  I also must convert to sRGB, a smaller color space.  In the case of this image it no longer looked good after those conversions.  I don't think there is a away to display it on the web and have it look good.  Incidentally, I am having the same problem printing it.

With this problem in mind, I decided that I would do the safe thing and capture one using high dynamic range, HDR, and high depth-of-field, DOF, in and effort to capture a shot which would convert well.  I shot one of the tall sunflower with false prairie indigo leaves in shade as the background

Tall Sunflower

I was able to control the process from beginning to end.  First, I processed the images for HDR using five series of five exposures.   Once the HDR processing was in place I processed those for high DOF, each HDR series had been focused at a different point.  I used Photomatix Pro for HDR and Helicon Focus for high DOF.  I really like the result.  Carol did too, saying that I must clone out the "bug" if I make her a print.  I have not tried to print this so I don't know how that might go.

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