The bog star, or grass of parnassus (Parnassia palustris) is a flower that definitely deserves a closer look. It’s not hard to find if you are in an area where it grows (bogs, as hinted by the name) because it’s just about the only flower that is still in bloom this late in the season. The first time I remember I ever saw it, was in September a few years back. Now in early August, they have just started blooming and I could still see plenty of buds today.
The bog star is exquisitely beautiful, an absolute delight to see through the macro lens. The pattern in the petals is unrivalled and you’ll find to your surprise that this white flower is much more colourful than you’d expect at first look. Even the leaves are beautiful, as reflected in the Swedish name ”hjärtblad” (heart leaf) as this flower is sometimes called here.
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The image is completely (well, almost completely) processed in Lightroom for web release, meaning that LR is increasingly becoming my one-stop-shop for all image processing. I tried the option to add a copyright watermark via the LR export dialog, but it’s not possible to change the font and I found the default style horrible. After some searching I found a plug-in that can insert a graphical watermark during the export process so I can now use my old copyright text, straight from Lightroom. The only thing I’m not happy with is that LR doesn’t seem to compress the jpg’s the same way as e.g. Photoshop does, so the file size is bigger than it should be. If I take down the quality, then the image just gets pixelated. So the ”almost completely” I mentioned is that I export the image to Irfanview and just simply save it with a quality setting that gives me the right size without completely messing up the image. A couple of quick clicks and it’s done – and I’m waiting for better compression in Lightroom 3, maybe?