I always tell people that they need to work an image.......this is from 7 hours of working this flower. I am going to post the black BG (my favorite) along with the high key image(Susan Candelario's favorite)......to show how I tried different approaches with the same flower
Black BG.... indoors....laptop case as BG....natural diffused light, Canon 1D Mark lll with the Sigma 180mm macro and the MT 24 twin lights @ -1&1/3 and f32 for 1/80 sec. at ISO 800 HH.
White BG same camera set-up except outside pointed at sky......3 stops over exposed (on purpose!) at f13 for 1/100 sec. at ISO 800 and flash at +1.
I also have this against a green BG (natural)....but hope you get the workflow process!
Hey Desmond
I'm quite a bit old school....as little as PP'ing as I can do. For the black BG.....I used a selective color layer for the BG......to get it really black......not much after that other than a bit of levels and I used Robert Amoruso's LCE trick to boost contrast. On the white BG......even less......the 3 stops of overexposure ensured the sky was pretty white (it was the blue sky from previous post w/clouds) but the flash bought ou the details in the flower. I don't think I used the contrast boost in the white BG.......as I wanted to keep it a bit more subtle. This was all done in camera!
Hope this helps.
LOVE that black version! I'm sure the high key would be really impressive in a large print as well but the drama of the black BG puts this one over the top for me. I thought in the opening image the other day (with the blue BG) that the flower looked very "alien" and the black seems to bring that out even more. I can see this whirling through space, can't you? :D
Out of all three BG's the black seems to set off the pink the most. Outstanding image, and wonderful series, Roman.
Great example of the effect of different BGs. This is such a stunning flower that I would add contrast and a bit of color to the one with the white BG to make the flower pop more, as in this example. I know that is not what you were going for. I like both the black and white BGs, with the blue being my least favorite, but still excellent.
Hi Anita,
I did try that myself and like it.....but as you said ....this time I tried to keep it a bit softer. Your re-post shows yet another direction you can take when trying these!