Photo by Terry Smith

Dandelion Fireworks

Feeling a bit creative but I couldn’t get out that day, so I grabbed a Dandelion clock from the garden and set it up indoors to take a few macro shots. They turned out to be nothing special so I opened them up in ON1 Photo Raw to see if I could improve them in any way and got myself some pleasing results and this is just one of them. The really great thing is that with all the options in ON1 you can really let rip trying them all out. I was trying for something a little different to the usual macro shot and maybe a little surreal.

Editing notesI started out by using the selection tool to first of all select and darken the background using the 'Fill Black' option to make it uniform, I then selected the 'Dandelion clock' using the same tool by drawing a rectangle around it, this allowed me to adjust the exposure and colours using the 'Tone' option to get the effects I wanted. I then did a 'No Noise AI' sharpening of the image to bring out more detail in the seed heads. Then I selected the rule of thirds option in the 'Crop' tool to position the clock as a partial image so as to contrast with the darker lower space. Finally using the 'Borders App' located in the 'Effects' menu I chose 'White Key' and then reversed it within that menu so as to compliment the black background.

X-S1
ƒ/2.8
6.0999999046326mm
ISO 800
1/27 sec

Dandelion Fireworks

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