The Story Behind the Photo: Christmas Poinsettia Macro

The Christmas Poinsettia Photo Story

I bought my wife a poinsettia and mum arrangement for Christmas. Soon after I brought it home, the poinsettia was in my macro photography studio in the basement. My wife suspected this behavior when I purchased the poinsettia.

I noticed one of the poinsettia leaves were a different color. The leaf was kind of orange and green like it hadn’t quite turned red yet. I backlit the leaf from below using an Ikea clip-on gooseneck lamp. This gives the leaf this glowing appearance.

I mounted my Olympus OM-D on a tripod and used a remote shutter release to minimize camera shake. I manually focused the image by zooming in on the LCD screen.

Christmas Poinsettia Photo Details

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M5
Lens: Olympus 60mm f/28 Macro Lens
Focal Length: 60mm
ISO: 250
Aperture: f/22
Shutter Speed: .4 seconds
Lighting: Used a gooseneck desk lamp to backlight the poinsettia leaf

Poinsettia Macro Post Processing

This photo required only minor post processing.

I used detail extractor in Color Efex Pro 4 to lightly increase the details in the photo.
Selectively adjusted the brightness and saturation using Viveza 2.
Sharpened the photo using Unsharp Mask in Adope Photoshop CC.

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