This is a bit of an experiment. There is a very nice man who lives in a humble home who always has the most amazing flowers growing in front. His house fronts a freeway offramp, so when you get off the freeway these amazing flowers are right in front of you, larger than life. Seriously. They’re the biggest flowers I’ve ever seen.
Last night I walked to his house on the way to the street fair and asked him if I could take pictures of his gorgeous flowers. He spoke almost no English, but we managed to communicate with each other enough to get the question and answer down.
Only, I was feeling so rushed because he interrupted his gardening to let me take pictures that I shot directly into the sun, ending up with a bunch of backlit flowers. Really backlit.
I tweaked them some in Lightroom and then tried different methods of blending layers to bring them out of the shade…the one that looked the most interesting was to overlay 2 layers, both solarized, one in screen and one in “soft light”. It’s weirdly surreal, but I really still like it, even with the green tips on the flowers. I’m not in love with the shadowing of the flowers in the background, but everything I tried with that just didn’t work, so it is what it is.
For maximum sunflowery goodness, view it large on black.
