Glass in the Gardens

Summer Flower Show, Phipps Conservatory 2013

Three photos of Chinese lantern pods, rendered in glass and floating in the pond

by Jason Forck, instructor, Pittsburgh Glass Center

I found it difficult to get a photograph of these floating Chinese lantern pods that I really liked and photographed the display several times over a couple of months.  The first two photos in this series were taken at night, the third one in late afternoon.

The Accidental Photo

One day I took a quick photo of a sunflower growing at the corner of our property.   I rather liked how it turned out and uploaded it to Lightroom to do some minor tweaking. 

While I was working on the photo, I zoomed in to check something, and got this lovely close-up of the sunflower center and the busy bee feeding on it.  I decided that both photos were actually rather nice, with the second one being the more unusual.

Noise reduction comparison - yacht in Doha

Version 1

Version 2

Noise reduction doesn't always produce a good result, but in this case I think it did indeed help the photo.  So did straightening it so that gorgeous yacht is not pointing upwards.