Floral Abundance

From my garden I cut some Papaver rhoeas, a single Papaver nudicaule, several varieties of Ranunculus, alstromeria in profusion, forget-me-nots, hardenbergia, a lupine, and a few Orlaya grandiflora “Minoan Lace” (an endangered wild flower originally from Crete).

I arranged these cut flowers on my large light box, and photographed straight down with my camera on a tripod using my 50mm Sigma f/2.8 macro lens.

This image was composed in Photoshop from six different exposures, each at f/10 and ISO 100. The range of shutter speed times was from 1/30 of a second (about what the light meter indicated) to 4 seconds (pinned to the right of the histogram as high-key).

I started layering this image, with the lightest exposure as the bottom layer, painting in the detail I wanted from each successively darker layer.