Bas Wind is the winner of the July 2020 FujiLove Magazine “Very Close” photo assignment. Here comes Bas’ story behind the winning photograph.
The idea about this image was in my head for a little while. But life has a funny way of getting between things. As with some of my images, after I’ve taken and edited them, I usually think of a better way to compose or to do something else in a different way. It was the same with an image like this one year ago.
Since then I have been waiting for a second chance to create a better version (honestly… I had forgotten all about it and the assignment subject brought it all back to life). Luckily, my wife had just been given a nice bundle of sunflowers and after the kids went to bed, I had some time ahead of me. Off I went with looking for a nice composition (looking for the one petal to rule them all… a little bit of a tedious job I might say…). After this, I started to look for a balance between the sharpness of the central petal and that of the surrounding petals. In other words: which was the right depth of field for what I had in mind. Eventually I settled with f/4 and a focuspoint in the middle of the leaf. I had to do the rest in post.
Did I mention I only saw the assignment subject hours before the deadline expired? Well, I did…
I imported the JPG file into Lightroom on my iPad and started to emphasise the difference between the central and the surrounding petals. I had the basics covered, but now I had to strike a balance between the image being of a flower and have people wondering for a (little) while if it’s flames they’re looking at. So I added a colourgrade to bring out the reds and added a standard filter for final touch. The faded look that this standard filter offered drove the image home.
So now I have a very close shot of a sunflower that may be mistaken for an image of flames. With the deadline looming and bedtime being behind me for a little while I decided this had to be it. A couple of minutes later Tomash must have received it. To my surprise it was not only selected to be in the august edition of the FujiLove Magazine, but it was also the winning image.
Would you like to participate in the future FujiLove assignments? Subscribe to FujiLove Magazine and FujiLove Gear Talk and join our insider FujiLove community.
It would be wonderful to have you on board!
About Author
