I was slogging my way through some very wet farmland west of Orting, WA today, trying to get a good shot of Mt. Rainier. In one section, massive free-range dandelions had taken up residence in the midst of the long grass.
This one stood out—literally. More than a foot and a half tall, it was as healthy a beast as you could hope to find in farm country.
The image was deliberately underexposed to preserve the richest possible color. I brightened it a bit during development to bring out some of the details in the darks areas.
[Little known fact: all the image I upload here get darkened when they are saved for the web page. I always have to lighten them a bit to compensate.]
Shot with 150mm Schneider-Kreuznach f/2.8 lens on Phase One XF camera. A panorama of two images, each shot at ISO 50, 1/800th second, f/8. Combined in Capture One software.
The Phase One camera is especially good at capturing rich color in underexposed images. The same effect happens on small-chip cameras, but to a lesser extent. This is one of the things I love about the medium format camera: it can preserve very rich colors.