Even the blandest flower can be spiced up. Take for instance this unspectacular shot of dahlias:
I had decided to throw it away, but instead transferred it to a folder on my desktop that said “Flowers Unused.” It’s where I put things I have considered using in my blog but haven’t—either because I found one I liked better or meant to use but lost on my desktop or ones that I’m just saving. Sometimes I put things there just because I don’t know where else to put them… or they wind up there by accident when they should have gone into the file of photos already used in my blog.
I checked and found it was fair game. I’d never used it in a blog post. On the other hand, it was so unspectacular that I was a bit embarrassed to use it, even when cropped down to a single flower. So, I played around a bit and ended up with this:
Pretty fuzzy, but some interesting shapes, shadows and shades. Still not blogworthy, though, so I played around some more and got this:
and this:
and this:
and finally, this:
All of these photos came from the first photo shown, making use of only cropping, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, saturation, temperature, tint and sharpness settings—the basic tools in the edit function of Photos—the app on Mac that replaced iPhoto. Pretty fun. Like making a tasty new dish from leftovers in the fridge that anyone else would have tossed out.
https://ceenphotography.com/2016/05/09/flower-of-the-day-may-10-2016-bearded-iris/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Seems you had fun with Dahlia! 😊
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😊
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What fun
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Nice to fool around with Photos, isn’t it? Especially when you always can go back to the original. Which tools did you use to get the last one, it is just like an etching.
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Just the ones I mentioned. I keep doing them in different combinations until I get a certain effect. If I had to do this with my left brain, it would never get done.
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It works out great. I guess I have to be a bit more daring. Thanks for the post, I’ll follow your example and try some more combinations.
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When you do, please send me a link in my comments. I sometimes get busy and things get so far down the Reader list that I don’t see them..
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I’ll do that.
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I like your style of cooking 😀 😀
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Ha!!! I somehow expected that.
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I like the forth pick the best.
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Ha. this popped up at the bottom of someone else’s post and I thought, “Cooking with Flowers.” Sounds interesting. So I clicked on it and started to read and had read a good bit of it before I looked at who had posted it and realized I had! I had totally no memory of ever writing it. Guess 5 years is beyond my realm of memory. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it so I’m going to do a no-no and “Like” my own post!!!
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