Unidentified seeds by the side of a path

[DanK]

passed this while walking not far from my house last week. I did not identify the plant.

C&C welcome, of course.

[Bobobird]

Interesting plant and excellent shot. The outer leaves look almost like that old time ladies hairstyle

How did you get the all black background ?

[DanK]

How did you get the all black background ?

Thanks. I enjoy shooting seeds and dessicated flowers in the autumn, in part because of the interesting textures.

For the background, I use a very expensive, high-tech method: a black fleece jacket I bought on close-out at REI, hung over a clothes rack my daughter left in the basement when she got back from college! I shoot these things indoors most of the time, to minimize motion so that I can stack the images more easily. I usually use two halogen floods in cheap boom hairlights, with a diffuser on them. I recently discovered that a great diffuser is parchment paper sold for baking. As long as the fleece is far enough back and there is not too much direct light on it, this works fine. if there is too much light, you get a slightly pebbled gray, which I get rid of by selecting the background by color in a separate layer and then pushing the levels down to pure black. I did not have to do that for this one. Apart from stacking, this has only basic editing in LR. I've been intending to go to a fabric store to buy some black muslin, which I think would be better because the surface is more even.

[Bobobird]

Thanks for the detailed and useful info.

I am looking at flash diffusion for doing macros and the use of parchment never crossed my mind. Thanks for that.

[DanK]

Bobo,

for macros in the field, I use different sort of diffusion. Most people use relatively large diffusers, but I use a small one. I started with a standard Sto-fen omnibounce. I put a second piece of diffusing plastic inside it. I wrapped the edge with aluminum foil to avoid light light leaking to the side, I then covered that with a double layer of regular white paper towel. I forget where I got the suggestion for the last of these. With a DIY bracket, I place this right next to the front edge of the lens.

There are a number of posts about ways of doing this at this site.

Dan