Photo Story: Crown Vetch Wildflower

These Crown Vetch wildflowers show up in my backyard every summer. In fact, they take over one of my flower beds.

Crown Vetch

For years, I’ve considered them an invasive weed. I’ve finally given in and started enjoying them as wildflowers and just try to keep the patch of crown vetch under control. The Crown Vetch has been labled an invasive plant in many states.

I find that the small round petals that form a crown like appearance make it a unique subject for flower photographers.

Details

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1
Lens: Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro Lens
Focal Length: 60mm
ISO: 500
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/100 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -3/10
Lighting: Cloudy Morning

Processing

Cropped the photo in Lightroom 5.
Applied the Detail Extractor and Lighten/Darken Center Filters in Color Efex Pro 4.
Used the Flowers II filter in Topaz Clarity.

Lowered the Saturation and Luminence using the Green Sliders in the Develop module in Lightroom CC.
Used Viveza 2 to selectively lighten and darken areas of the photo.
Selectively removed noise from the photo using Topaz DeNoise.
Selectively sharpened the photo using the Unsharp Mask Filter in Photoshop CC 2014. The layer mask was copied and modified from the last processing step.

Written by Martin Belan

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