Lilies

[purplehaze]

I finally got focused enough yesterday morning to spend some time shooting. I even ventured into Photoshop to apply some text.



I don't like the colour of the text; I sampled from a petal, but it looks too purple. The font seems to be too lightweight to balance the rest of the picture. I am wondering whether I should lose the shadow. What do you think? Any comments, suggestions welcome.

[Manfred M]

Hi Janis - you can always play around with the saturation of the colours or change the opacity to vary it a bit.

Another way might be to use a sample from a different part of the flower or the plant itself.

Try applying some of the Blending Options; add a stoke, embossing, glow, drop shadow, highlights. I often use drop shadows or a stroke in my titles works better than plain text.

One tool that I have found useful at times is this online application that Adobe has; it looks at the colours in your image and comes up with some colour suggestions using one of the many colour models. I use it when I teach colour grading techniques,

https://color.adobe.com/create/

[DanK]

A very nice image, and very nice lighting. Reminds me of 19th and early 20th-century botanical prints.

I don't find the shadow bothersome, although I'd probably end up removing it.

I do find the vase slightly distracting. There are a couple of options for doing without, if you decide you want to. One is florist's foam. However, I find it hard to be precise with that. A second is the Wimberley Plamp II, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ..._plamp_ii.html. The original plamp was too weak to hold something this heavy without rotating, but the II has a much stiffer joint and would probably fine, although I haven't yet tested mine with something that large.

I'd make the text smaller, to compete less with the flower.

[billtils]

Very very nice Janis.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely image... I think that a set of different type flowers printed on a canvas texture paper, all with the plain white background, might be a very nice triptych wall decor...

[Geoff F]

I'm with Dan about the text. I like the colour and choice of lettering but one size smaller would be less distracting.

[xpatUSA]

I have an old botanical-style print of some tulips, about 28Wx35H cm. The French and Botanical titles are each side of the bottom of the stem. The font is about 2mm [sic] tall. The artist info is hardly 1mm tall. All in dark copperplate style, possibly Indian ink.

Posted for what it's worth. An on-line search might disclose more samples.

Artist info on mine is "P.J.Redouté: 141".

[purplehaze]

Such a wealth of good suggestions! I will work on it and share the results. Thank you all for the excellent feedback.

[xpatUSA]

Such a wealth of good suggestions! I will work on it and share the results. Thank you all for the excellent feedback.

Thank you. Here's a lily painting by the artist that I added above and looking a bit like your shot. Observe the small text:



From:

https://www.botanicalartandartists.c...h-redoute.html

Drifting off-topic a bit but more about him here:

http://library.cincymuseum.org/bot/redoute.htm
.

[purplehaze]

Awesome, Ted. Thanks. I would like to try to mimic that whole style. And I found just the tutorial to help me do it. Four hours into the very thing I have been needing to get me launched in Photoshop, a whack of work finally lands on my desk after a weeks-long drought. Ain't it always the way. Don't know how soon I will be able to take this where I am imagining, but thought I should just give you the shooting details, which I omitted when I first posted.

Dan, you commented on the light. It was shot in natural light, against a white board, with another white board below. I used my 70-200 mm f/4 Nikkor on the D750. This was a long exposure, 8 seconds at f/16, at the short end of the lens, 70 mm. The sun was still rising, and I was at the west side of the house, with some diffuse sunlight coming through through the west window and the south window above and to the right. I have left the setup where it is and have been shooting it periodically as the light changes during the day. I hope to have some more good exposures to share at some point soon.

[Wavelength]

A beautiful image; as of now the title kills th image; please make it as weak as a watermark, then it would remain harmless

[purplehaze]

Thanks for the feedback, Nandakumar. I put the title in to fill dead space. Now I am thinking texture, plus a smaller title might do, but if you have other suggestions, please don't hesitate to make them.

[Manfred M]

Janis - the way you have done your image makes it look somewhat like a book cover, where the title is an important component of the page. If this is what you are trying to do, then it works.

If on the other hand, it has another purpose (a stand alone image, for instance), then one has to make sure that that the description does not become a significant compositional element as a large font and bold colours do exactly that. I suspect that this is what Ted is trying to show in #90.

[xpatUSA]

Janis - the way you have done your image makes it look somewhat like a book cover, where the title is an important component of the page. If this is what you are trying to do, then it works.

Janis has already mentioned in her #10 a desire to mimic the botanical print style.

If, on the other hand, it has another purpose (a stand alone image, for instance) then one has to make sure that that the description does not become a significant compositional element as a large font and bold colours do exactly that. I suspect that this is what Ted is trying to show in [#9].

Yep.