The Majestic Matilija Poppy

So what do you do on a Saturday morning when you can't sleep anymore? Go out and photograph flowers.

For the last couple years I've driven past these gorgeous flowers that only seem to bloom in the springtime. This year i decided to stop and see what I could do with them.

Dealing with an overcast sky and slight wind I decided that I would concentrate on the flower's shape and see what materialized. I used a Photoshop plug-in, Silver Efex Pro 2 and chose one of the presets as an overall mask. I brushed in the desired effect leaving the center of the flower its natural color.

After a little bit of sharpening and a lot of noise reduction I'm happy with my results.

I"ll be working on a few more Matilija Poppy pictures so stay tune.

I included the before picture, but realize that in the end the final results is what I saw as I photographed.

Thanks to the Nik Software for the great plug-ins.


Before

After












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