Pink

Another beauty, Barbara. I like the contrast of the whole flower with the petal pieces. Only suggestion would be again to have more breathing room on the bottom and right. Perhaps the design could have curved into more of an L shape to move the petals inward. Just a thought.

Wonderful color palette. What scanner are you using?

Carolyn, thanks for the suggestions. I've got some more flowers to work with and will keep your suggestions in mind as I compose them for the next shots.

Michael, I am just using an HP Photosmart C5580 all-in-one printer, scanner, copier machine. I had never heard of this technique until just last week but thought I could at least try it with this printer and so far it seems to work just fine. I place the objects face down on the glass and leave the lid off. My printer is in a cabinet so when I'm ready to preview, I close the doors to the cabinet to keep out any outside light which helps to get that black background. I do some processing in Nik Software to bring out the brightness and structure and then I use Photoshop to clone out any specks on the background. I find that some subjects don't work as well as others. It's an interesting process and one that I will continue to develop although I won't be giving up my camera any time soon. But this is just another process. Have you tried it? Thanks for your comments.

Barbara:
Great to see another fellow photog trying this technique.

Your post processing has really bring out the colors and textures here. Scanning is a cheap large format 'camera' and is really great for bring out the details and texture in flowers. With small flowers, you can scan up to 2400 dpi (depending on the hardware) and get more details than what the naked eyes can see. However, I usually don't go higher than 1200 dpi as the files get way too large for my Mac to handle. Here are two examples @1200 dpi gerbera and osteospermum.

One of the 'challenges' with scanning is getting the arrangement right and it can be frustrating as you cannot see under the glass. I use the preview scan a lot and make adjustments several times before doing the final scan.

Love to see you do more of this. If you want to get inspired, look at Harold Fienstein's 'One hundred flowers' which contains some of the most beautiful scanned flower images I have seen and Pat Sampson's gallery (Asti, Twilight, White Primrose, Poinsetta).

Gary, thanks so much for the encouragement. I will definitely check out Pat's work and look at Harold Feinstein's work as well. This is such an interesting technique and one that I think I'm really going to enjoy. You're right about the composition being the hardest part but, like you, I keep checking out the preview and then move things around until I'm happy with the composition. I'll be doing more and posting them as I continue on this journey. Thanks again.

I like it Barbara, your "branching out" (a Flora Gallery term,) and it seems you are succesefully "petaling" (another Flora term,) into the wonderful world of scanning photography. Congrats!

What a lovely arrangement! The colors coordinate very well and the few isolated petals add to the interest. Good work! Happy holidays!

Thanks Craig and Mark, for your comments. This is a very fun technique. I hope to do a lot more work in this area and will keep you posted. Happy holidays to all.