Nice, Joayne. I think the last one is my favorite of the group.
Kevin, I like your series too. That looks like one big azalea bush. Topaz Glow is one I've not played with much yet, but I plan on trying it before long. I need to find the right image.
I confess I'm not quite sure if this is allowed under the rules, but I thought I'd try. If it's not in the spirit of the "contest", I'll remove it. I read about someone who had created some incredible images by scanning them. I'd still had some of my clearance flowers that were fading rapidly, and I knew I wanted to photograph some. Tonight I had the idea to try to scan one and see how it would come out. I realized 2 things right off. 1) my glass wasn't as clean as I thought it was, 2) just letting the cover be open was not enough to get a good black background. Either I need to turn off the lights in the room or put some VERY black material on top of it.
The 3rd thing I realized as I was looking at the image in PS is that the resolution on my scanner isn't really high enough to do these like I want. It's a combo photo printer, scanner, copier that has done well for day to day use, but 600 dpi isn't really good enough (IMO) for this. Having a nice, clean glass, higher resolution, and a good black background would have reduced my PP time. Most was spent cleaning up stray spots & getting a good black and clean edges.
I thought the image looked kinda neat though. I see a lot of possibilities with this kind of image capture.
Nice detail on the flower and good contrast with the background.
