Three Forks, Montana

The Irises are blooming like crazy

May 28, 2022

Our front yard irises all seemed to bloom en masse two days ago (April 26), which was one day before they bloomed the prior year. So hard to believe (but I do) that they can be so consistent even though the weather can be so different from year to year. I guess the one thing that doesn't change from year to year is the angle of the sun and the number of daylight hours.

I picked out this one iris to photograph.  Flowers are so much fun to process now that Lightroom has tools that will automatically select and mask the subject (or the sky if you are processing landscapes).

In this case I asked it to select the subject, and it accurately selected and masked the blossom. I then chose to invert the selection so I could darken the background to make it less distracting, as well as make the background a bit more blurry by reducing clarity, texture, and sharpening.  I then selected the subject a second time and played a bit with the exposure sliders to adjust the iris blossom to taste. 

 

Before:

After

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA