first signs of spring on raspberry lane

i saw these little beauties popping up in the last few days ~ most people would probably be excited that they mean spring is upon us, but i was just excited to get to take some pics of them! flowers are a nice departure from my usual subjects, little kiddos running around like nuts! the flowers stay where i put them, always look beautiful, and give me a chance to play around with the editing. here's a step by step of the fun i had turning simple crocus from my yard into a beautiful, artistic looking image.

first of all, the setup for the shot, a peek behind the curtain...prepare to be amazed! ...um, or not:


and here's the magic of photography...from that to this...the sooc shot:
(click on any of the screen shots to view larger)

i cropped the image in ACR and then opened in photoshop:

and then, the first thing i do on almost any image is to manipulate the light. my favorite tool for this is MCP Actions Touch of Light/Touch of Darkness. i added light to the center bloom and darkened the edges of the image.
next i stamped the layers and sharpened this layer, then applied a layer mask to reveal the sharpening only on the center bloom.

ok, that was the basic stuff...now for some real fun! i ran the Velveteen 23 action ~ Kubota Actions. this really enhanced the light manipulation i did earlier and added some drama. it's a bit much straight up, so i lowered the opacity to just 25%...perfection!

now to punch up the color and contrast, Punch Lite ~ Kubota Actions

now, i really could've stopped right there if i wanted a realistic image, but with flowers i like to go dreamy and very artistic. so for the dreaminess i turn to Little Ballerina ~ Isabelle LaFrance.

and finally, some texture. i used Painterly ~ Florabella, applied straight up, overlay blend mode at 24% opacity.

tada! before & after: