On 25 Aug 05 at 14:23, Jim McKenney wrote: > A flower I have found to be very difficult to photograph is > Fuchsia Gartenmeister Bonstedt. Whether in the sun or in the > shade, the image always comes out with a patch of glare on the > flower. I've taken dozens of photos of this one and have yet > to get a perfect one. > Does anyone have any suggestions? You have to experiment. [Once again I demonstrate my superior grasp of the obvious.] I'm a great believer in taking photographs using natural light, but this principle works better taking portraits in diffuse illumination from a window that when snapping flowers in the great out-of-doors. Some strategies for taking decent flower pictures out of doors: 1. Choose an overcast day rather than a sunny one. 2. Use fill-flash. I don't know if your common or garden variety mass market digital camera can do this. 3. Shade the subject from direct sunlight. 4. Use a reflector to get extra light onto the subject. A sheet of cardboard covered with badly wrinkled aluminum foil works well, so does a piece of plain white pasteboard or a piece of plywood painted white. Don't use a mirror; you want diffuse light. 5. Put a diffuser over the subject -- a piece of thin muslin or old curtain will do. 6. If using flash, put a very thin cotton handkerchief over the flash unit. If the flash unit can be aimed, bounce it off a wall, ceiling, or reflector. 7. if you find your photographs are too blue or even gray because the color temperature is too high on an overcast day, try using a pale yellow filter. There are photographic filters made specifically for adjusting color temperature. You can probably do this digitally during post-processing. 8. Learn to use your image processing software to the max. One trick is to create a negative grayscale copy of your image, mask the image with it, then fiddle with the brightness. You will selectively affect the darker areas. It helps if you blur the mask first. One other point, a page out of Diane Whitehead's notebook: before you push the button take the time to meticulously tidy up the background. Look through that viewfinder and pay attention to all the elements that distract from the main subject. Even though you're not wasting film, it's better to take one good picture than a bunch of poor ones. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island