Day 308

Today's photo is inspired by Lisa Gordon's gorgeous flower shots at Lisa Gordon Photography. In her latest post, she explains how she uses Gaussian blur to achieve a beautifully soft focus effect, so I thought I'd give it a go.

The roses I bought the other day have opened up a lot and are looking beautifully blowsy, although a little wilted around the edges. I set up near a window and used my reflector to bounce light onto the far side of the rose. After cropping the image and adjusting colour balance, brightness and contrast in Lightroom, I opened up the image in Photoshop. I selected the central area of the rose, and inverted the selection. I then used the 'refine edge' tool to feather the selection heavily. Next I applied a Gaussian blur filter. After reopening the image in Lightroom, I 'dreamified' the image even more by reducing the clarity, applying noise reduction, and adding a heavily feathered white vignette.

Thanks for the inspiration, Lisa! :-)