Surreal Sun - Day 69 of 365

A sunflower for a second day in-a-row? Yep. It was incredibly rainy and dark all day in Atlanta today, so I decided to create my own sun again.

I've had our sunflowers up high on the mantle so the cats can't get at them, which has forced me to appreciate the underside of the flowers more than I normally would. I figured that it would be cool to do a shot of a flower from the bottom up for a change.

I originally shot this on a white, blown out background. But, when I got it to the computer, it was really uninspiring. So, I decided to figure out how I could spice it up a bit. I started by getting rid of the white background and inserting a sky in place of the white. Then, I decided to take the colors beyond what you would typically see in the real world for some extra pizazz. Looking at it now, it reminds me of something from that show Pushing Daisies because of the colors.

For the sky, I used Tehran Sky from Hamed Saber (utilizing its creative commons license). I really loved the clouds in the photo. You should check out Hamed's photostream for some cool shots.

The flower was lit with an SB-600 through a 24"x24" softbox, which was camera left and close, but a little above the flower.