Spider Chrysanthemum

White chrysanthemum

Fall officially started last month, and I haven’t had much time to write anything for Focal Plane since the end of summer. Actually, not having the time isn’t quite true. My time has been spent in other ways, including doing quite a bit of nothing. I suppose most people feel overwhelmed occasionally. I sometimes find that when I have too much to do, it’s easier to just put it all out of my mind and do nothing. Plus, I’ve been sick with the flu for about a week and a half and just haven’t had the mental energy to think, let alone write coherently.

Well, the rainy weather has finally let up and the flu bugs have left me for another home, so I’ve finally had some time to go back through my photographs for some ideas to jump-start some new art and writing projects. Sometimes you just have to go through the motions even if you don’t feel inspired, you know? The physical work of typing sometimes is enough to get ideas moving. Not flowing, exactly: just sort of creaking along at a glacier’s pace. But that can be enough. Even a slow-moving glacier eventually carves out the whole valley! Anyway, on to the featured picture.

This spider chrysanthemum was one of the first studio photos I took. It’s lit by professional overhead lighting, but a single strong light source at least three or four feet overhead would give a very similar look. If you want to replicate the lighting, make sure you only have one light source: all windows and doors should be shut or covered, and any other lights turned off. You will still need the flash on your camera to help bring out the detail in the petals. This technique is called fill flash, because you use the flash to help fill in the details in the darker parts of the scene. If you don’t use a flash, the upper part of the flower will be lit but the lower part will be too shadowy for you to see detail, and you can’t coax them out in a photo editing program, either, because they won’t be there. The detail has to be there when you take the picture. Start with a good photo before you try to do photo editing. Remember: garbage in, garbage out.

Here, the flower is simply resting on its side on a black cloth, and the camera is placed level with the table about three feet away. I don’t remember the lens I used, but it was most likely in the 75mm range. If you have a macro lens, this is the place to use it. See how the pressure of the flower resting on the table creates an almost triangular shape to the flower? Notice how the contrast of the petals at the top (which are fanned out so nicely) with the petals at the bottom (which are pressed together) creates a dynamism to the photo. There isn’t the traditional symmetry here that you would expect from a straightforward flower shot.

When you’re photographing familiar objects, try placing them in unusual positions. Most people would expect a flower in a vase, photographed from the side. But a head-on shot of a flower gives a whole different image, and placing the flower so that light and shadow give it an unusual shape adds another dimension to the image. It’s this play of light and shadow that gives the photograph its appeal, so don’t be afraid to try unusual settings for your subjects.

Creating High-Contrast Art in Photoshop

The original full-color image of the kayaks was an RGB image.

Years ago, back when I was just learning how to develop black-and-white film and make prints, I became intrigued by high-contrast film photography. There was a Kodak film made for graphic arts applications that essentially reduced images down to a silhouette. The graphic artist in me was busy looking at form, shape, and the interplay of positive and negative space in the image. The photographer in me saw a good way to take a marginally interesting photograph and get something more vivid out of it.

I haven’t done much photo work lately due to time constraints, but I’ve been doing some dabbling and came up with an interesting way to create a high-contrast image using Photoshop’s built-in filters. I am still using an older release of Photoshop CS, but this technique should work with any of the newer versions of the software. It may also work with other photo-manipulation software, including Photoshop Elements, but you will have to look at your software’s manual or menus to see if you have any filters that are similar.

I started with the color photo of the kayaks, which was in an RGB (red-green-blue) mode, and ran the Graphic Pen filter on the image. This particular filter results in an image that looks only black-and-white, but the image is still RGB. Next, I adjusted the curves until I had the water dark and the sky white. The shape of my curve was an “S” shape laying on its side. You’ll just have to pull at the curve until you get a result that you like — this isn’t a one-size-fits-all prescription for all photos.

The high-contrast image of the kayaks owes its detail to the graphic pen filter used.

Finally, I pulled up the Hue/Saturation menu and made adjustments. I clicked on the box labeled “Colorize,” and adjusted the other sliders until I had something that I liked. You’ll need to do some experimenting, but your end result should be a high-contrast version of the image that you started with, although depending on your settings, there will be some amount of detail in the image. What you end up with is basically black-and-white (or whatever color you picked in the Hue/Saturation menu), without intermediate shades of gray.

Tip: work on a copy of your image, so you don’t accidentally save over a photo that you want to keep.

Buy My Art

Last night I set up an account on Fine Art America to showcase and sell my photography. I only had a couple of hours to start going through my photographs and uploading files, so there are just a couple of images that are ready for purchase.

One of the images is Pink Water Lily Close-up which was one of the first images that I added to Focal Plane. The pink lily has been the all-time favorite here, so it’s now available in my gallery for purchase in a variety of sizes. The image isn’t quite a standard size, but you can buy mats and frames when you order the print. Gallery prints and stretched canvas prints are another option if you like a more modern look to your artwork. The pink water lily lends itself to a variety of presentations, so the art itself won’t limit your choice of frames or mats.

Stop by and visit, and leave a comment. Be sure to bookmark my page or add it to your watch list, if you are also a Fine Art America member.

Pennsylvania Monument Details

I went back to Gettysburg National Military Park during the Thanksgiving weekend with my husband. We both enjoy photography, so we spent some time at the battlefield taking pictures. Unfortunately, that Thursday it was bitterly cold and after only about 20 minutes my hands were so stiff that I could hardly hold the camera. It was also approaching 4 o’clock, and getting overcast.

The late afternoon light wasn’t adequate for available-light photography, so I decided to try some flash photography and take some interior shots of the Pennsylvania Memorial. Even in the unheated interior of the building it was a little warmer than outside, and it was out of the wind. I spent some time experimenting with flash fill and adjusting the intensity of my flash. I don’t work with flash very often, so this was a learning opportunity for me.

My objective was to have a strong enough flash to light the subject adequately and give some highlights to the highly textured wall detail without washing out the whole scene. I also wanted to achieve the kind of visual texture that so much good black-and-white photography has, and the stairwell was a good subject for texture. I used a bracketing technique and took several shots of the same scene. I first selected an aperture, then adjusted my flash intensity and took several shots at different speeds. I selected a second aperture setting and did the same thing.

It’s easy to do bracketing with digital photography because there’s no wasted film. In a sense, I think that digital photography can make a photographer lazy because it’s easy to just keep taking shots until you have one that you like. But on the other hand, it allows photographers to play without worrying about wasted resources, and so I find that I am more likely to experiment with aperture and speed settings.

Detail on a door at the Pennsylvania Monument at Gettysburg National Military Park.

The interior of a stairwell wall in the Pennsylvania Monument at Gettysburg National Military Park.