Bouquets
to Art
Bouquets
to Art is an annual event hosted by the Fine Arts Museums of
San Francisco in which florists, designers, and garden clubs
create floral designs inspired by objects in the museum's collection.
The
Photography
Most
of the photos were taken in the dim light typical of museums
that exhibit light-sensitive objects. I used a hand-held Canon
A620 camera with no flash. No exif (exposure) data is shown
here, but because of the dim lighting, nearly all of the photos
were shot with wide-open aperture at the widest angle possible
to maximize light.
Image
Processing
Because
I was preparing a large number of images, I employed a consistent
work flow designed to correct the underexposed images, detailed
below. Except for step 1 (rotation), all of the adjustments
were made nondestructively, through Photoshop adjustment layers,
without touching the original image. (A few of the exposures
of the images shown here went beyond my handheld steadiness
theshold but I left them in because I liked the flowers.) The
process:
1.
Rotate (if necessary)
2. Normalize histogram with levels adjustment layer
3. Correct tonal range with curves adjustment layer (setting
dark areas first and then midtones/highlights)
4. Bumb up color about 10 percent with a hue/saturation adjustment
layer
5. Sharpen by copying background layer, moving new layer to
top of stack, running radius 10 high-pass filter in overlay
mode at 65% transparency. (This method is less destructive and
more flexible than using Photoshop's built-in sharpening tools.)