Glowing Flowers, shoot in full sun

For me, I have a few photo tips that really help me. Just getting out a few times a week with my camera and taking a walk in the park or city helps me improve my skills. I tend to look at everything (Lauri has seen me do this and has said I don't miss much). Remember to look behind you (and up).

The tip I wanted to share was shooting flowers in full sun. I really like the look of backlit flowers as they just glow. I tend to bracket my shots, use a macro or zoom lens and find some flowers with the sun behind them. I normally have a small extension tube attached to get in even closer. There are a few public gardens near me that have a ton of flowers, so this where I go for a lunch time walk.

I process the files in lightroom, and combine the images using the photo merge HDR right click menu. Or I just chose one of the bracketed images, if I like it better than the HDR image.

The first image below is the combines HDR image from a walk in Duke Gardens.
In the second image, I used Topaz Studio to apply a painterly affect. And I also cropped the image.

Cheers and have fun!
Wade

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Highlight Story For My Firm's Intranet Site

311 Gallery Showing in Raleigh NC Some questions and answers for an upcoming story about my work and current gallery show. 1. How long have you been a photographer & artist, and what made you get started with this? I started getting into photography in 2006 when I purchased a Canon digital DSLR to document my children's sports activities. I learned a lot taking images of those activities. I think the artistic side of photography came later, around 2010, when I started participating in a photography scavenger hunt. I've also always loved to draw and in college I did some oil painting. 2. Can you talk about the image that will be displayed in the gallery and what the inspiration behind it? As a kid, I loved toy cars and Lego, so I was drawn back to these toys when thinking about scenes to photograph. I have a photography project called TheToyCarProject where I have over 300 images of toy cars, which I try to photograph as if they are real full size cars. This gallery

Poetry and the Midjourney AI

I have been testing out the Midjourney AI for a while now and have loved exploring what it can create from a simple prompt. You can see my creations and prompts on Instagram at @artbywadeai . Recently, I tried feeding the AI two of my poems and was very impressed with the results. The first poem I gave the AI was my Sunshine Reaching one. Go take a look and then check out these great images. The prompt I used for the Midjourney AI was the text of the poem with the parameters --chaos 25 --ar 3:2 appended at the end as shown below: With rays of warmth, he embraces her soul. Arms, iron strong, surround their love. Sunshine reaching, fills the room. With feathered whispers, they embrace the day. --chaos 25 --ar 3:2 Here are the first images returned. From these, I choose the second and last to render as full size images or upscale. Here are those results. After this experiment, I gave the AI my Strength poem and was very pleased with those results. Here is the full prompt for Strength:

Gallery Show Prints

So I wasn't sure if I would like a metal print or a paper print, so I printed both for the gallery show. I decided to use the metal print as it was much more vivid. Of course, now I have a 20x20 framed print of the Mod Rod which I'll have for sale. And I'll have the metal print in the show at the 311 Gallery coming up next month. I'll be adding both the print and metal options to my new Etsy shop, plus you can always contact me for limited edition prints. The 311 Gallery show starts this Friday and runs through December in Raleigh, NC. https://www.311artgallery.com/ I also have the image available on my art site (Square format): https://wade-brooks.pixels.com/featured/1-mod-rod-wade-brooks.html and here (Rectangular format): https://wade-brooks.pixels.com/featured/mod-rod-wade-brooks.html Cheers, Wade http://www.ArtByWade.com

Art by Wade

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