Fine Art Photography: Flowers on a midsummer’s night

I’ve been trying to master the style of floral fine art photography that looks like an oil painting. I am certainly not a master, but I can offer you some tips for getting started. It is a fun and rewarding style of photography- especially if you have a garden or access to lots of flowers. You will need a tripod. Put the Aperture all the way up (I put mine at 22), and keep ISO as low as possible. You will need a slow shutter speed- that is where the tripod comes in handy. I shot all of the photos slightly underexposed in order to retain detail. IN addition, you can make a sharper image if you use a remote shutter, because the camera can move slightly when pressing the shutter button. I wish I had taken a cell phone photo of the bouquet when it was still outside and in the same lighting, but alas, I did not. You can still see the difference that a good camera can make! I edited the image in Lightroom. First, (and most importantly) I turned the highlights all the way down (-100) and kept the image slightly dark while editing the rest of the exposure. In addition, I boosted the Color Noise Reduction far beyond my normal comfort zone (+68), added a bit of clarity (+15) and reduced the texture (-20). The rest, I edited as normal. I prefer using the Lightroom presents from the Greater than Gatsby Film collection. I edited out all distracting colors in the background and fixed leaves that insects had eaten. A note on the flowers: These are all from my garden. The yellow roses are Teasing Georgia, by David Austin; the light pink roses are St. Swithun, also by David Austin; the large pink peonies and dark pink roses are both unknown varieties; the rest of the flowers are Salvia, Mock Orange, and Spirea. I have found that the easiest flowers to photograph have a lot of petals like peonies or roses.