Rose Mountains Sunset

June 3, 2019
by Michael Scandling
comments 46
Abstract / California / Floral Photography / Florascape / Photo Log / Photography

IMG_6423-V2Blog

May 13, 2012. Monterey, California. Shooting roses from the side opens the door to myriad possibilities. I was unaware of most of them when I shot this. Imagine my surprise when I checked focus a moment later, magnifying the image to 100%, and was faced with a visage that took me straight to the New Mexico desert with Georgia O’Keeffe by my side.

I coined the word on the spot. A floral landscape. Florascape.

This is a case of the best camera is the one you have with you and necessity is the mother of invention. The camera was a 10-megapixel Canon s95. This image started as a tiny crop of the original — 300 by 200 pixels at most. I had to very carefully enlarge it about seven times just to work on it. There was lots of experimentation in post — all limited to selective sharpening, blurring and vibrance with Georgia looking over my shoulder offering gentle guidance. No painting filters. Never EVER! Then, as proof of concept I painstakingly enlarged it a step at a time to 10,800 by 7,200 pixels — 36 by 24 inches at 300 pixels per inch — to be able to print it large. I could take it to 72 by 48 if anyone’s interested.

(Canon s95. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw; Editing in Adobe Photoshop.)

More Fine-Art Photography at www.amagaphoto.com

The Author

California based fine-art photographer featuring abstract, impressionist, and minimalist seascapes — near and distant — and floral-based images. Fine-art photography can be seen at www.amagaphoto.com All original images on this blog are copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 Michael Scandling. All rights reserved. No images on this site may be copied, duplicated, reused, published, or re-purposed in any way without express permission from the copyright owner, Michael Scandling.

46 Comments

    • Michael Scandling says

      Grazie! I can almost to see her jabbing me in the ribs with her stiletto-sharp elbow and saying, “hey, watch it.” Then she would smile with a twinkle in her eye, and I would smile back. I like that thought.

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  4. Carolle-Ann Mochernuk, says

    Michael – Love this amazing creation! Your explanations are extremely vivid too! Merci beacoup.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. Steve Schwartzman says

    What a good abstraction. Even before I read your reference to O’Keeffe, New Mexico popped into my head, specifically adobe walls.

    Have you thought of writing up your enlarging and sharpening techniques and submitting them to a photography magazine or website?

    While florascape was original for you, others have already adopted the word. I did a search just now and got 320,000 hits.

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    • Michael Scandling says

      Thanks very much Steve. When I checked focus on my little s95, The scene just jumped out at me. The tiny crop that I used for my image just happened to be in the exact center of the frame, so when I zoomed into 100% on the camera I saw almost exactly what you see here minus the painterly post post-processing work.

      No, I didn’t think of writing up my technique and it would’ve been something to do until last year when Topaz AI Gigapixel came out and made the whole task much easier. That software is quite effective. It does require a very powerful computer though. I have a 2018 MacBook Pro with a six core i9 CPU. But for the record, the technique was essentially do a bit of sharpening, using the smart sharpen filter in Photoshop, then blow it up no more than 33% then do a bit more sharpening and sometimes a bit of Gaussian blurring to mitigate the aliasing and then go up another 33% and so on. It worked on this image because there isn’t a whole lot of detail. It wouldn’t work on an image with intricate detail.

      I looked up florascape as well and so far I see it’s mostly landscape contractors and designers. There are florascape groups on Flickr and Instagram but they appear to be mainly landscapes with with flowers in them.

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      • Steve Schwartzman says

        Two weeks ago I upgraded from my mid-2010 MacPro to a newly released iMac with an 8-core Intel i9 processor and 64 GB of memory. Processing large photographs on the old computer had been increasingly bogging down, so I figured it was time to do something about it.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Michael Scandling says

        That computer is more powerful than a locomotive and can jump tall buildings in a single bound. If it had a chest, bullets would bounce off of it.

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  7. Frank says

    I love the balance between esthetics and technique that you strike with your art. It’s something that I find fascinating about artists in general (i.e. Wow! That’s beautiful. How did he do that?)

    “Rose Mountains Sunset” is indeed a beautiful image. Thanks for the insight behind it.

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  8. Carolyn KK says

    Frank is ‘right on’ in his response to your insight and creativity.
    I’ll add that you are an artist through and through.
    A poet at heart comes to mind!!

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  12. oneowner says

    It’s a beautiful image, Michael. Certainly, worth all the effort you put into it. There used to be a plug-in called Fractals or Resize (from ON1) that I heard was used to make small files large enough to be printed very large. I know it was used years ago when I worked at the George Eastman House to make some very big enlargements. I don’t know if it’s still available or if there has been a replacement (more than likely, since the original was over ten years ago). Personally, I’ve never used such a plugin but I suppose if they are still available and are effective in making good files it might not be a bad investment if you need to do a lot of this type of work.

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    • Michael Scandling says

      Thank you very much. I did this many years ago and did it the hard way. Now I’m using Topaz AI Gigapixel now. It works pretty well. Not perfect, but pretty well. It tests better than the ON1 product.

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