Flowers and other Flora
- Thread starter dpc
- Start date
npdien said:
Another wonderful pic!
Just curious - are you doing a lot of post-processing? Or using flash or spotlights to get your flowers separating from a very dark, often black, background? If you don't want to say - that's OK. Sometimes it's good to keep your best techniques secret!
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dak723 said:npdien said:
Another wonderful pic!
Just curious - are you doing a lot of post-processing? Or using flash or spotlights to get your flowers separating from a very dark, often black, background? If you don't want to say - that's OK. Sometimes it's good to keep your best techniques secret!
Hi Dak723
It is natural light. The flowers enjoy more light and the background is dark, making the flowers separating from the dark background. I pay much attention to background when taking photos to create such separation. A lot of my flower photos were taken with darker background to avoid distracting details of the background. Especially, when the subject is bright enough for you to set f8, the dark background become darker. When processing raw photos, you may increase contrast, blacks and lens vignetting in Camera Raw to make dark background darker.
Hope this information will help you.
Cheers, Dien
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npdien said:dak723 said:npdien said:
Another wonderful pic!
Just curious - are you doing a lot of post-processing? Or using flash or spotlights to get your flowers separating from a very dark, often black, background? If you don't want to say - that's OK. Sometimes it's good to keep your best techniques secret!
Hi Dak723
It is natural light. The flowers enjoy more light and the background is dark, making the flowers separating from the dark background. I pay much attention to background when taking photos to create such separation. A lot of my flower photos were taken with darker background to avoid distracting details of the background. Especially, when the subject is bright enough for you to set f8, the dark background become darker. When processing raw photos, you may increase contrast, blacks and lens vignetting in Camera Raw to make dark background darker.
Hope this information will help you.
Cheers, Dien
Your shots are an inspiration and it is obvious that you pay close attention to composition and various details. Do you use a tripod?
I can visualize a wall of framed prints that would be so nice. Makes me want to try harder to do better. Now if I just lived where you do.
Jack
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Nicely done, dpc.Jack Douglas said:npdien said:dak723 said:npdien said:
Another wonderful pic!
Just curious - are you doing a lot of post-processing? Or using flash or spotlights to get your flowers separating from a very dark, often black, background? If you don't want to say - that's OK. Sometimes it's good to keep your best techniques secret!
Hi Dak723
It is natural light. The flowers enjoy more light and the background is dark, making the flowers separating from the dark background. I pay much attention to background when taking photos to create such separation. A lot of my flower photos were taken with darker background to avoid distracting details of the background. Especially, when the subject is bright enough for you to set f8, the dark background become darker. When processing raw photos, you may increase contrast, blacks and lens vignetting in Camera Raw to make dark background darker.
Hope this information will help you.
Cheers, Dien
Your shots are an inspiration and it is obvious that you pay close attention to composition and various details. Do you use a tripod?
I can visualize a wall of framed prints that would be so nice. Makes me want to try harder to do better. Now if I just lived where you do.
Jack
Thanks Jack. All of the photos posted here were taken handheld as the ambient light allowed me to set shutter speed of 1/60s or faster. I've never had any pictures printed. As I change my mind all the time, some pictures that appear nice now may look stupid in several months or one year. When I just bought Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro Lens, it was substantially used for taking portraits for several first years. Flower photos were something hard for me at that time. Understanding that the lens is made for flowers and macro stuff, I tried to take some flower photos from time to time, but all of them looked deadly dull and were deleted at once and unregrettably. Then there came one day I found myself wanting to keep one or two flower photos and showing them to my friends. My advice is at the beginning tight composition should be used to avoid distracting and irrelevant details. You may want to use pieces of strings or something else to control surrounding branches, leaves and flowers to keep them out of the frame. Then when your skill develops, you may take wider pictures to include more elements contributing to the composition as your style comes into being.
Cheers, Dien
P.S. Here are two other photos of the same flowers. One was taken using tight composition with pieces of strings keeping surrounding leaves, branches and flower out of the frame and the other includes neighboring flowers.
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Dien, thanks for that. I must start to carry string with me on my hikes. I am beginning to see that while flowers are naturally beautiful, they are not strikingly beautiful unless the composition works. I agree that tighter tends to be better.
The granite wet saw that has consumed me for the past month+ is now cutting pieces for my house concrete planter so I hope to be back to shooting soon and in a few weeks, assuming no hiccups, with a 1DX II. That'll be my reward for my design and construction of the saw and finishing the planter for my wife.
Jack
The granite wet saw that has consumed me for the past month+ is now cutting pieces for my house concrete planter so I hope to be back to shooting soon and in a few weeks, assuming no hiccups, with a 1DX II. That'll be my reward for my design and construction of the saw and finishing the planter for my wife.
Jack
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Jack Douglas said:Dien, thanks for that. I must start to carry string with me on my hikes. I am beginning to see that while flowers are naturally beautiful, they are not strikingly beautiful unless the composition works. I agree that tighter tends to be better.
The granite wet saw that has consumed me for the past month+ is now cutting pieces for my house concrete planter so I hope to be back to shooting soon and in a few weeks, assuming no hiccups, with a 1DX II. That'll be my reward for my design and construction of the saw and finishing the planter for my wife.
Jack
Hi Jack. You're right. Composition makes an experienced photographer different from laymen. By the way, you should take some pictures of your planters and show them here.
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