Gaillardia in Flight, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Gaillardia in flight…afternoon delight. Well, I did take the images in this composite in the afternoon, and Gaillardia is a delight, but there was no flight, except maybe of fancy. The flowers were quite still on a recent quiet afternoon.

My idea here was to create a a blur effect with layer-masked areas of sharpness (mostly the centers of the flower) appearing through the blur. I created the underlying image of the static flower using three exposures to control the dynamic range involved (see technical data for details). To create the motion effect, I loosened the pan rotation knob on my tripod, and let the camera gently swing.

In Photoshop, I placed the static version of the flowers on top, being careful to align the flower centers. Then I added a Hide All layer mask. I carefully “painted in” the sharp areas I wanted, using a large and “soft” white paintbrush on the black layer mask.

[Each image: Nikon D300, Zeiss Macro 100mm f/2 ZF Makro-Planar T* Manual Focus Lens, f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted. Three exposures composited into the still view of flowers (see text) at exposures from 1/6 of a second to 1 second. Motion exposure at one second (see text).]