The Glory of Morning Glories

I had such fun playing with my digital camera and its software altering pictures of my sunflowers that I thought I'd try the same with my Star of Yelta morning glory vine.  This vine has taken over the front porch of my house and is steadily making its way up my flagpole as well!  It's really beautiful in the early hours, and I get to admire it daily when I take my children to their bus stop.

These pictures were taken with an HP Photosmart M525 digital camera.  Someone asked me about that in the comments of "Tiptoe Through the...uh...Sunflowers."  Would you believe I had to go and look??  *grin*  I don't know -- it was a gift!  Anyway, let me show you what an unretouched Star of Yelta morning glory lookes like:

Stunning flowers, gorgeous vine...but I digress.  I want to play.  :)  First, as I am wont to do, I took all the color out and made a black-and-white version of the original...

I liked the way this effect highlighted the center "eye" of the flower and made the five rays of the star look like runway lights for bumblebees.  Next I added a light sepia tone and tried an x-ray effect...

I thought this made the Star of Yelta look like an entirely different flower altogether.  I decided I should try the traditional sepia look next...

I usually like sepia pictures very much, but in this particular photo I felt that the effect darkened the entire image too much, and the little flower was almost lost among the foliage.  I played with the light and added a vintage filter, with the following result...

The eye lost some of its definition, and the leaf on the left seems to almost glow, but I liked this better than the traditional sepia look.  Now let's return to a bit of color, shall we?  This is a sightly color-reduced version with a softening filter...

All said, I think this probably ended up being my favorite photo because of its ethereal quality.  It looks like it could float off the page at any second.  Next, I went back to my old super-saturating habit.  (That never fails to make me want to say "Supah-saturated!"  I know, I'm weird.)

I got unexpectedly cool results in the next two photos.  The first is a super-saturated version with a cool-toned filter...

I loved how this made the eye of the flower glow like a light-bulb filament.  The next is super-saturated as well, but with a warm-toned filter...

Suddenly the whole blossom is on fire!  It looks like a lava flow coming out the eye and flowing down the sides of a mountain in perfectly spaced columns of flame.  I patted myself on the back for stumbling onto this one.

Hope you enjoyed your photo tour of my morning glory vine!  Hopefully it didn't leave you with the blues, like this gentleman here...