Thank you all for your kind comments. I really hate it, though, when leaves droop over the bloom... or you have an otherwise nice photo of a bloom, but then discover brown leaves or weeds underfoot when you go to crop or otherwise massage the image.
I am probably going to open a can of worms here, but here is my opinion on photo editing...
While I am in agreement that images should not be doctored to make the flower appear better (or a different color) than it is in real life (I have purchased any number of daylilies based on their hybridizer images and have been majorly disappointed), sometimes some judicial photo editing is called for to produce an acceptable image. Yes, I confess that I am guilty of "doctoring" images at times. Usually images need cropping. Other editing is done mostly to "touch up" remove little specks of dirt or pollen, or to sharpen the image, or to lighten/darken the overall image or fix the contrast. (I have learned for the most part to NOT to take full sun daylily pictures (the images rarely look good) but while the bloom color (imho) is more true when captured in the shade, the overall image may be dark enough that it requires lightening.) Though sometimes, for whatever reason, the bloom color is not captured correctly, and then color "doctoring" becomes a necessity. As an example, I have a lavender seedling which is always digitally captured as a rose or rose purple; to make that image appear closer to its true color, I pretty much
have to enhance the blue.
Fwiw, the only thing that was done to the submitted 'Sparkling Opal' image was to blend out one dirt spot, and do a "quick fix" enhance (which sharpened the image and lightened it). In my opinion, there was no reason to leave the dirt spot there, and the quick fix one step enhance brought the flower closer to its true shade (as I recall it). However, if you wish to see the original image (and compare it to the image that I submitted):
'Sparkling Opal', unedited image 'Sparkling Opal' image submitted to the database
Re the plant itself... I had 'Sparkling Opal' many years ago and got rid of it when I started moving towards more tetraploids. I really loved the large, fragrant, diamond dusted flowers... but the plant was not well branched and the flowers were on quite short scapes (for the flower size) and best enjoyed in a very raised bed (as in, a 22" bed). Now I am somewhat having second thoughts about this plant... but sadly, I was unable to find a source with a quick online search. (Consider that a caution about being too quick to delete a daylily, just to make room for something newer and arguably fancier.)
(I do, however, have a grand-daughter plant which is somewhat polymerous. I have kept it lo these many years partly out of sentiment as an early "success" (even though it is only 60% poly or so), but largely because the huge yellow poly blooms of the seedling really cheer me up. Like its grandmother, though, the large flowers are on relatively short scapes, so the seedling is also kept in a raised bed for my close-up viewing enjoyment. I have recently had second thoughts about restricting my poly pollen-dabbing to tets only, so I plan on working with that seedling again, and hope to get something nice from it (maybe not yellow) down the road. One of my goals (apart from preserving or increasing the poly trait) will be to get the scape height up!)
Grand-daughter of 'Sparkling Opal'
edited as I forgot to mention cropping... which can be quite important to bring focus onto individual blooms or otherwise present a pleasing picture
