Photo Story: Highland Doghobble Wildflower, Smoky Mountains

When hiking the Great Smoky Mountain National Park to photograph waterfalls, don’t forget to bring along your macro lens.

Highland Doghobble

I visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in early May.  My main purpose for the visit was to photograph the beautiful waterfalls in the park.  While hiking the mountain trails to photograph waterfalls, I was surprised by the number of wildflowers right along these trails.

I hiked the trails to Grotto Falls, Laurel Falls, and Lower Lynn Camp Falls.  All of these trails had an abundance of wildflowers.

It took me a while to find the name of this awesome looking wildflower.  Highland Doghobble is a great name for a Smoky Mountain wildflower too.

Highland Doghobble Wildflower Photo Details

Camera:  Olympus OM-D E-M1
Lens:  Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro Lens
Focal Length: 60mm
ISO:  400
Aperture:   f/5.0
Shutter Speed: 1/250 of a second
Exposure Compensation: -7/10
Lighting: Shady Mountain Trail

Wildflower Photo Processing

• Cropped the photo in Lightroom 5.
• Applied the Detail Extractor and Lighten / Darken Center Filter in Color Efex Pro 4.
• Used Viveza 2 to selectively lighten and darken areas of the photo.
• Used the Flowers I filter in Topaz Clarity.

• 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.
• Applied the Lighten / Darken Center Filter in Color Efex Pro 4 again to make the borders very dark.

Written by Martin Belan

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