roses in my garden

some roses in my garden.

stromboli roses i planted about a year ago:




rose that was "deposited" by bird or some other natural way:




rose that was planted by previous owners:

 

I like the effect you have achieved in the top one Kamchow. How did you do that please?
Jenny

 

jenny, there are at least 2 ways to get this effect:

1) use a dslr with a wide open aperture to get a shallow DoF (depth of field).
2) use PS (photoshop)!

in my particular case, i used a crapola compact camera i bought on fleabay for a tenner.
then i used PS to blur parts of the background and then darken it a bit.

simple as that (though as you can imagine, messing about with PS does take a bit of time).

if you or anyone else wants an in-depth step by step method, shoot me a line, and i'll try and explain what i did.

ps: our monitors are probably not equally calibrated. so if the photos look too dark, adjust your monitor accordingly. ta.

pps. i did the above photos in a rush. i now spot a few things i could have done better. ah well, nevermind.

 

thanks for that Kamchow. I have a Lumix FZ45 and I don't have PS ,
Jenny

 

jenny, i'm not an expert on the fz45, but as far as i can ascertain, its sensor is similar to a compact camera sensor and so it will have a large DoF. in other words, you'll find it hard to isolate subjects from the background.

you don't have PS?
no sweat as Gimp can come to the rescue.

Gimp is FREE!

there are many tutorials on using Gimp to blur backgrounds. you'll find a few on youtube.

in short, you mark out the subject, then "inverse select" the rest of the image and finally use gaussian blur to, well, blur it!

after that, its up to you to brighten, darken, add contrast, colour etc as you wish to make your photo stand out.

hope that helps you out.