Native grass, backlit

[Tom Barry]

At the LBJ Wildflower Center, Austin, TX, this morning. The 40D+EF 70-300mm USM IS II:
Native grass by tombarry975, on Flickr

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[mugge]

I love it.
Cheers Ole

[Manfred M]

Tom - it almost works for me.

I have two issues with the image. The first is the out of focus distracting element on the left. The second is the patchy background. Fix those two elements and you have a very strong image.

[Tom Barry]

Thanks, John and Ole. Manfred, I debated with myself over both of the suggestions you made. I'm always hesitant to go full black (to avoid the Elvis on Velvet look) and whether the defocused grass in the background would or would not add depth to an otherwise almost flat presentation. I'm still undecided, but I have avoided pondering the question of "Is it certainty or certitude?" Best regards, Tom

[John 2]

That's a nice image but I have to admit, I prefer the modified version over the original. The OOF element adds nothing to the comp.

[Manfred M]

Manfred, I debated with myself over both of the suggestions you made. I'm always hesitant to go full black (to avoid the Elvis on Velvet look) and whether the defocused grass in the background would or would not add depth to an otherwise almost flat presentation. I'm still undecided, but I have avoided pondering the question of "Is it certainty or certitude?" Best regards, Tom

Those issues area always two issues I worry about when I retouch images. I generally like leaving some level of detail in the black areas to avoid the look you mentioned. In this image, I find that the mottling looks more like artifacts so I tend to look at which approach looks better.

With the out of focus grass in the background, it is quite bright and adds a distracting element to the composition. Darkening the area sometimes works, but that tends to end up adding a large dark element that is still a bit distracting.

[Tom Barry]

I've been persuaded by Manfred's view. I'm going to get rid of the second grass stalk and make the background fully black.

[Geoff F]

If you want something more than a single stem I would be tempted to try creating a rough selection around the top half of the main stem then copy and paste back but with a slight reduction in size so it appears sufficiently different.

[Tom Barry]

Thanks for the suggestion, Geoff.

[Urbanflyer]

Magda Indigo--https://www.flickr.com/photos/9550033@N04/--does nearly all her work with a black background. It might be worth a gander. I am not advocating for this approach but sometimes it really works.

[FootLoose]

Well Elvis has a lot to answer for. I agree with Judith, there is nothing wrong with black backgrounds for flower shots.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/127892...h/33395929374/

[DanK]

I certainly find nothing wrong with pure black backgrounds. I use them for most of my images of flowers and dead plants, e.g.,



The problem with the OP image, to my taste, is that there is too much black and too little subject. The single stem on its own doesn't have interesting lines, and the camera is too far back to capture interesting details. One option would be Geoff's--one way or another, include more than one in-focus stem. Another would be to go much closer, including only a smaller part of the stem but capturing more of the potentially very interesting fine detail. Or you could do a compromise between both approaches, e.g.,



BTW, with many images, an easy way to turn a mottled background pure black is to select by color range in Photoshop, fix up the selection as needed, and then use the selection as a mask on a levels adjustment, zeroing out the selected area.