Desaturation

Wild sunflower field near Wisconsin Dells
Photograph by Tom Atwood

Sometimes as a photographer you don't want a picture to be too pretty. In fact, I almost always go for unusual or interesting over pretty. If you find a wild sunflower field it's easy to take beautiful pictures, the kind that are featured on greeting cards. But to take an interesting picture of a sunflower is more difficult. To make this photo more eye-catching (hopefully), I desaturated it during processing. In other words, I removed some of the bright yellow and green colors, giving the image more of a gray, old-fashioned appearance. Even the sky that day was gray, which helps. However, this photo will never be on a Hallmark card. Shutter: 1/30; Aperture: f/3.5; ISO: 100; Focal length: 18mm; Software: Lightroom® 2.