Jewels of the Garden

I decided I wanted to do something a little different when deciding what to do for my next artwork and chose to create a nature scene. I haven’t created anything with hummingbirds since I created Hummingbird Charm for my mom for Mother’s Day back in 2020. (I had that artwork printed on a plate which she still hasn’t hung up yet.) I love hummingbirds, as you might be able to tell from my logo, so it was past time I created a new artwork with them. Plus, I needed an excuse to use those awesome hummingbird feeder props I got from Nightsong/MaryWilliams. This one took a while to create since I couldn’t quite get the birds to stand out from my background scene enough at first but, thanks to my helpful friends, I finally got it looking right.

This scene was rendered in Poser 12 with Superfly. I used a single point light as my “sun” and the skydome as an ambient global light. I tried using only a heavy depth of field to bring out the hummingbirds from the background, but they didn’t stand out enough. After a few suggestions from my friends on Facebook, I added a box primitive between the hummingbirds in the foreground and the background elements and then put a mostly transparent color shade on the primitive then rendered as normal. That created a slightly faded effect on the background and brought out the hummingbirds in a much better way than without it. In Photoshop I used a couple Photoshop actions to play around with the colors slightly. For the most part, I wanted this to look like a nature photograph, so I didn’t go too wild with the actions. I then took the image into Lightroom where I made the final adjustments and finished the artwork.

Most of these items are available from the Renderosity Marketplace (unless otherwise noted):

• Ruby Throated Hummingbirds are from Songbird Remix Vol 2 by Ken_Gililland 
• Garden Patio by RPublishing & GrayCloudDesign
• Flinks Modern Skies by Flink
• Flinks Rolling Hills by Flink
• Hummingbird Feeders & Hanging Baskets by MaryWilliams (available at Art Station)
• Fushia Plants (from Daz3D)