Photo of the Month for September

My pick this month is a high-key portrait of a single Starburst lily. This bloom is just beginning to open into the beautiful and beautifully scented flower that it is.

A short video of a flowering Starburst lily can be seen here.

For a gallery view of this print, click on the image.

Best always,
Frank

Queen of the Night (Part 2…

…for Part 1 see Photo of the Month for September.)

Last week I had the opportunity to record some images of an incredible blooming event. Our long-time friends and fellow Cereus enthusiasts, Ralph and Steve, gave us the heads up on the impending blooming of their Night Blooming Cereus.

The first photo shows the buds as they were beginning to open at 7:15 on the evening of August 20. At about 8:30, Ralph called to say that the blooming had started and that all six of the flowers were opening fast. I took the next photo of the almost fully opened blooms at about 9:40. The close-up shows the intricate details of the flower’s throat.

Once again, the beauty of the flower and the perfume scent that it gives off is hard to describe. However, Ralph did a very good job of it on his blog. So I suggest you hop over there and take a look at his accounting of the evening (but come back of course).

(Click on photo for gallery view)

Question and Answer on Technique

Occasionally I receive a question from a viewer on the process I use in my floral photography. I’m not really disciplined enough to use step-by-step techniques that are appropriate for each image. I guess it would be much easier and less time consuming if I did. But, my processes are much more experimental and I will work hours on one image until I like what I see. Here is a recent question and my answer:

Q: Frank, I very much enjoyed viewing your online photo gallery. Would you mind sharing how you photographed the southern magnolia and ten orchids? How did you create the black background, the lighting, and the appearance that the flowers were suspended in air? That is, how did you set up your studio?

Kindly,Cheryl

A: Cheryl,to answer your question about my “Suspended” flowers, I shoot about 95% of my flower shots outdoors in their natural environment, still attached to the mother plant. I don’t have a studio but on the few occasions that I do bring any flowers inside, my technique as far as capture is very uncomplicated. I put a piece of black foam core or felt beneath the subject and either shoot from above or if the flowers are cut and in a vase, I shoot them against the black foam core or an off-white wall. I try always to use natural lighting but if I need flash I use a wireless control on my Nikon and two remote flashes, one on either side of the lens. Each light can be removed and placed away from the camera and each can be turned off or on and the output on each can be adjusted if shadowing is desired.

I use Photoshop CS3 as my digital darkroom as well as several graphic software plug-ins to achieve the results I’m looking for or sometimes discover accidently. I experiment a lot with different techniques but probably spend too much time in processing and fine tuning on the computer. However, IT was my professional background and I enjoy the fact that I can now control my output from original capture to final print.

I have several galleries on PBase.com one of which is devoted to providing examples of how I get from an original image to the final print. The floating magnolia is shown at the bottom of the web page and I invite you to take a look at that as well as the many other images that you will find there. The gallery is titled “Transitions” and can be found at:
http://www.pbase.com/fzipperer/transitions

Example:

1. The Original Image

2. Original Marked for Cropping

3. Cropped and Converted to B&W
(There are many ways to covert to B&W and I use several different ones, but recently I have been using the B&W action layer in CS3 for most of my conversions.)

5. Removing the Background
(I used the eraser tool with the background color set to black.)

6. The Final Image
(After processing the image with the leaves attached, I decided to eliminate them to really draw attention to the beautiful bloom of the Southern Magnolia. I also print this image in sepia tone and color as shown below.)

Best regards and good shooting!

Frank

Photo of the Month for June

Photo of the Month for March

“Black Coleus”

Picture of the Month

Many of you know that my favorite photo subject in nature is flowers. If you didn’t already know that, one visit to my online gallery would reveal it right away. I enjoy not only finding and capturing the floral subject, but I also spend many hours in my digital darkroom, manipulating and tweaking an image until I like it well enough to want to share it with an audience.

Each month I will feature one of my finished prints in this blog and also the home page of my website. This month’s favorite is titled “Black Calla Lilies”. I chose to execute this image in black & white to emphasize the already black look of these unusual Calla Lilies.

I hope you enjoy my Picture of the Month.

Frank