Summer Tiger Lilies

A little while ago the tiger lilies that were planted around the house and at the golf course where I work were in full bloom. In full bloom, these flowers were beautiful so I tried to capture the beauty with my camera on a couple of different nights. I took the pictures in the afternoon with the setting sun shined on them to really make them glow.

Using the Nikon D90 and 18-105mm lense, I used my Slik mono-pod to help sturdy the camera to get the images sharper since I couldn’t use my tripod at these angles. I was mainly concerned with the depth of field on these images so I used aperture priority mode with the aperture ranging from f5.6 to f11. I tried to focus on the center of the flower and sometimes didn’t get the tack sharp focus I wanted since I wasn’t on a tripod.

The images were processed in ViewNX as RAW files by adjusting the Picture Controls, White Balance, Exposure Levels and a few other small items that RAW files allow you to change. Most of these images are duplicates of each other. The top image is the RAW file that was processed into a TIFF. The bottom image was a TIFF file that was processed in PSE8. Using a number of copied layers of the same image, I adjusted the color type and opacity of the different layers to get different looking lilies. I then used the brush tool to allow some parts of these layers to show through while others didn’t. In the end, I have an image that combined 3 or 4 layers into one creating a very neat post processing effect. I then saved them as jpegs to upload them to this site.

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