Backyard April Flowers

Today was the first decent weather day in quite some time.  I managed to get a few macro shots out of the back yard.

Above is a Hellebore cultivar called Spotted Lady, a 2005 perennial of the year. 

This next shot is a focus stack of a tulip bloom that I produced manually in Photoshop CS6, using smart objects and layer masks.  This is the first time that I recall using Photoshop's Large Document Format to save the original work.

This is a heavily processed shot, coming from three stacked camera raw shots.  For added measure, I ran it through HDR Efex 2.

Both shots should be expanded to full-screen in order to be appreciated.