Natural Light & Garden Flowers

[Wirefox]

Backlog processing at the present. Its windy and its pickling it down outside so nothing lost. C&C is very welcome.

[Steve S]

Hi steve, i think if your going to clip your backgrounds to pure black, you should go all the way with it. Make shure you have enough light on the subject and the background is substantially darker and you shouldn't have any trouble clipping the background to black.

[Wirefox]

Thanks Steve. I will view these on the macbook they look very black on this monitor but I have had this problem before. I was trying to use natural light but I think a gentle fill may have been in order on the opposite side to the main light source. I will try using a reflector next time but I suspect I will need to be more accurate than that. Maybe if I use a half snoot on a speedlight.

[wilgk]

The last one with the angle composition and the way the light seems to jump out from the centre of the flower is terrific.

[BJ Denning]

I'd agree that the third one is excellent, the lighting gives the flower three dimensions.

When you talk about clipping...are you erasing the background in post or are you controlling the lighting so that you can blank the background with a small aperture, low ISO, and/or shutter? I guess I am asking where these taken outside or in a studio?

[Steve S]

I'd agree that the third one is excellent, the lighting gives the flower three dimensions.

When you talk about clipping...are you erasing the background in post or are you controlling the lighting so that you can blank the background with a small aperture, low ISO, and/or shutter? I guess I am asking where these taken outside or in a studio?

Hi bryan. If your subject is in the light and the background isn't, the background will be very dark in the photo, if you expose for the lit flower. If you then go to the levels tool in post and move the left slider to the right it will make everything that is fairly dark go to pure black.(clipping the left side of the histogram) What you will be left with is a well lit flower with a pure black background. You can also do the opposite and make a pure white background.(reversing the lighting)

[Wirefox]

Bryan, Steve is spot on with this. The only thing I would add is that I tend to use the black dropper in 'levels'. Select the black dropper and then click it a couple of times on the darkest part of the background. You can back off or fine tune using the slider as Steve suggests. All these shots were taken outdoors with bright sunlight.

Kay, the third was my favourite but I have managed to overlook the composition. the top of the tulip needs to be at 45 degrees to the horizontal with a larger canvas so that the extreme tips of the bloom align with the top left and bottom right corners of the frame. The beauty of clipping the background to black is that you can very easily increase the canvas size.

[BJ Denning]

Thanks. Cool look, I'll have to give it a try.