Dahlia & Zinnia love!

While walking through Rockport Massachusetts a few weeks ago I captured some of the awesome, huge late summer blooms along the main street area...

This dahlia was pale, pale pink and its petals had dark purple edges. 

This is another dahlia that was light purple with yellow accents inside. I love the center portion of this one - all the little petals clustered together. I used my macro lens to capture the sharpness and detail of the petals

Above, I looked this one up online and found out it's called the "White Wedding" zinnia. Endless layers of white, fluffy petals.

And here is another colorful fuschia zinnia. Very different looking from the white one! It has a little crown in the center.

For the White Zinnia and the first picture of the pale Dahlia, I used a white canvas texture in Photoshop and layered it lightly over the image of the flower to give it a lighter look and block out some of the background (which was a busy garden outside a storefront.)  It also tempered some of that bright sunlight in which I had to take the photo. Bright sunlight is just not photography-friendly, but it sure made me happy that the sun was out..

To find textures like the ones I used above, you can visit the awesome Florabella Collection site and click on Textures. She has a lot of soft and pale options that look amazing with floral photographs and make any photo look like a piece of fine art and she is a joy to work with if you ever have questions or issues.
Have a great weekend...we are off to Maine until after Columbus Day! Enjoy!  M