Blue on Blue

[FrankMi]

My Niece gave my wife a Blue Mystique Orchid and of course I had to find an interesting way to capture an image of it. As I looked at the orchid I realized that the impact would depend to a large extent on what I did with the background.

First I shot a focus stack because I wanted the detail to be really exciting to explore. Because I was shooting it in the kitchen with available North window light, I knew I’d need to mask out the kitchen cabinets and find a suitable replacement.

Several of the CiC folks have provided a number of ideas for creating interesting backgrounds for flowers but I thought I’d play a while and see what comes up. I tried a solid Grey, then solid White, then solid Black background and although the black background looked best, it lacked flair.

I used the Color Picker tool to select one of the darker blues in the orchid and used that as a fill layer. Although better than the solid black, it still lacked something. I then decided to try a lighter shade of blue, again using the color picker on the orchid. Nice, but too light. I then used a circular Gradient to create a mask with the lighter blue in the center and the darker blue toward the outside. Better, but still, something was missing.

Ah-ha, I thought! It need a vignette to complete the look. So, I created another, larger circular gradient and put the solid black fill layer behind that. Now the three fill layers behind the orchid form a bleed starting in the center from light blue, through dark blue and into solid black at the perimeter.

OK, I think it may be ready for your feedback and constructive criticism.



Having posted it I just realized that when I cropped it I lost the black vignette so when I get a chance I'll need to reapply the vignette to the cropped image and repost!

Here it is with the black added. Now I'm not as sure I like the black vignette when I see them side by side.



Do you have a preference?

Also, for those that would like to see the image without any post processing, here is the SOOC image I started with.

[rtbaum]

Frank- I really like what you have done. I agree the first, to my eye, is marginally better

[Shadowman]

Very nice.

[Rita]

Frank, I also prefer the 1st image. I am probably not saying this right but in the first image I find myself looking at the flower, in the second I also want to look at the vignette

[Marie Hass]

I prefer the softer vignette of #1.

Reminds me of a Delft plate or tile. Very pretty.

Marie

[Otavio]

Very nice job, Frank. It looks like a painting. I choose #1. Regards,

[FrankMi]

It looks like the black vignette just doesn't work as well as I had hoped. So much for great ideas. On the other hand, thank you for the feedback and support Randy, John, Rita, Marie, and Otávio for the value-added additional opinions!

I thought all was going fairly well until my wife saw the picture, then all heck broke loose. "It's a darker blue" she quipped. "Can't be", I retorted, "The camera doesn't lie." "Go back in the kitchen and tell me if that isn't darker blue", she challenged.

Now after being married to this gal for well over 50 years, I know when to just smile and amuse her by going back in the kitchen and taking a second look. Er.. well.. she was right.... Again!

Not only was the orchid a darker blue, it was so much darker blue than I could post and still be believed! I've taken images on vacation and swear that they were more vibrant than most folks here on CiC would believe and all I've got is my memory (poor as that is!) to rely on.

This time I can calibrate the look of the image on my monitor with the original orchid right beside the screen so my next step is to do just that. It will surely muck up the background so with a little patience I may have an almost totally different looking image to post but a more accurate one.

All this brings up a question. If you can't trust a photograph to match what you remember the colors and vibrancy to be, how in the world can you get images to be accurate? In a lot of cases, folks think you have the saturation cranked too high but how can you validate that it's correct (or not)?

Oh well. Back to square one. Thanks for the support and encouragement!

[chauncey]

Thou shalt not argue with someone that you've been with for fifty years...next time, for more perfect colors, use a gray card. Twix you and me, perfect colors are overrated, except for skin tones.

[FrankMi]

Thou shalt not argue with someone that you've been with for fifty years...next time, for more perfect colors, use a gray card. Twix you and me, perfect colors are overrated, except for skin tones.

Thanks for the reminder William. I haven't used the Gray Card for a while and sometimes just forget about it.

I'll give that a try tomorrow assuming I need to reshoot because can't accurately just reset the white balance. I'd like to avoid the time consuming masking process if I can.

[bnnrcn]

Sorry for being late Frank Lovely image, I loved the BG and I will try it with one of my old flower images just to see if I can manage to do the same thing. I always learn something from your threads. BTW you have a wise wife

[deetheturk]

Beautiful Frank, well captured!

[Paniaa]

Another wow to you Frank. I too like the first image. Glad you're not arguing hahaha. A friend sends me some flower pics sometimes, which are saturated to heck but still look realistic. Go for it Frank

[FrankMi]

Sorry for being late Frank Lovely image, I loved the BG and I will try it with one of my old flower images just to see if I can manage to do the same thing. I always learn something from your threads. BTW you have a wise wife

Hi Binnur. This was the first time I tried to use a circular gradient to create a bleed from one color to another and I was very pleased with the result. I'm sure you'll find that it isn't too difficult. I'd love to see your before and after flower images when you get a chance. As to my lovely wife, I am so thankful that she was young and a bit more foolish when we met or she might not have accepted my proposal!

[FrankMi]

Hi David and Pania! Thank you both so very much for the encouragement!

I went back today to get the colors darker and more accurate but try as I might, I couldn't get a result I liked as well as the first one in this thread. It looks like I am better off leaving well enough alone and am very thankful that so many folks like the result.

[chauncey]

Frank, I went back and looked at your unprocessed image...there are several places that you could use
to color correct that image. The crown molding if it's white, the inside of the recessed lighting receptacle,
that gray/black rod poking up...any of those would work.

[FrankMi]

Frank, I went back and looked at your unprocessed image...there are several places that you could use to color correct that image. The crown molding if it's white, the inside of the recessed lighting receptacle, that gray/black rod poking up...any of those would work.

With your gentle persuasion, William, I went back one more time and reset the Gray, White, and Black points based on the unprocessed image. That took some of the yellow hue out and seemed to make the image a bit more crisp.

I also looked at the tag that came with the orchid and found that the reason for the intense blue shading was that the grower used a color infusion process. There is no way that these orchids would be this brilliant otherwise! I feel much better about how they came out knowing that.