Thanks Bob - that's what got my attention when I was wandering around with my camera
Nope - just good old fashioned sunlight. This was handheld using a 100-400mm lens @100mm with an exposure of 1/640s f/9.0 ISO 1000.
Thanks Jim - I will have to play around with the lighting. The back of this scene is in the shadow of a Japanese Maple trunk which is just out of the frame on the right and the lower left in front is in hazy but direct sunlight.Great job Alan!
It's funny, every time I called Doug to ask him questions about wildflowers in Texas this last week, I kept calling the Texas Bluebonnets as Bluebells instead. And he patiently would keep correcting me. And so now you posted Bluebells.... maybe I was speaking your photo into existence???
To Michael's question as to if you used a flash, the uneven lighting with the lower left being much brighter then the upper right does give the feel of you having used a flash on this. If you apply a manual vignette and darkening the lower left it would put the focus more on the Bluebells.
Thanks - History Brush to the rescue: Multiply brush for the brights and Screen brush for the shadows. My favorite tool for adjustments like this since you are effectively doing burn and dodge using the existing color of each pixel.
Thanks Jameel - I like the edit better as well. The light differences didn't seem that notable to me until I did the edits.