Neon Dahlia

As you may be aware, I have made a mild effort to stay away from Photoshop over the past few months. I have mainly used it as a tool to clone out unwanted objects and apply some sharpening. The main reason for this is because I want to demonstrate what can be done with the average person's equipment, such as a basic point and shoot camera and limited editing software.

With this in mind, I am posting this silly shot of a dahlia that I found in Bethany's garden earlier this month. I took this photo very late in the evening when she was watering the plants. This dahlia was a somewhat new flower, so it was just opening. I think it looks a lot cooler at this stage than when it is fully open.

There wasn't nearly enough light for photography by this point in the evening so I tried using my flash. I liked the way it reflected off the beads of water that were clinging to the flower. I thought I would demonstrate a very basic effect that can turn out kind of cool every once in a while and can be done on any cheap or free editing software. All I did was boost the contrast to about +60. Normally I would consider this on par with a lame parlor trick, but in this case I thought it worked pretty well. That hot pink gets me thinking about 1990...

Canon PowerShot S2 IS, 69mm, f/8, 0.5 sec, ISO 50, flash

If you're curious, this is the original photo...