My yard is full of azaleas of every size and color. This High Dynamic Range (HDR) example is actually in my neighbor’s yard and gracefully hangs over my fence. These are some of the most beautiful flowering plants that I’ve encountered and spring in North Carolina is an incredibly colorful time. I’m sure you’re thinking, He really punched that color on this one! But, this is actually as close to reality as I could get without diminishing the incredible florescence of these specimens.

My neighborhood is nestled in a small pine forest which explains the heavy residue of pollen on some of the leaves. This year was particularly heavy.

Processing: Five exposures from -2 to +2 ev were loaded into Nik HDR Efex Pro for very mild tone mapping and structuring. I then used Hue/Saturation in Adobe Photoshop to bring the colors back to reality. I did a small amount of perspective correction to straighten the fence slats and ended with High Pass filter for sharpening. . .just enough to define the edges but not destroy the softness of the flowers.

Equipment used: Nikon D700 with 28-70 f/2.8 lens set to f/9.5, ISO 800. Bogen 3221 tripod with MH054M0-Q2 ball head.