Two french tulips and several strands of bear grass. I did another one of these a while ( ) back and I actually had someone want to use it for a wedding...it never worked out but it was a nice idea so I thought I try it again.
There is a French tulip story. Sometime ago, I went to my main regular florists, Pure Design. Michael had French tulips. So I got a couple. I went later the same day or weekend to another florist and somehow or other Pure Design came up and I told the other florist that I got French tulips there. Well his face dropped and he was either jealous or envious and he said, hissingly,"He has the French tulips?" Well I had a fit and told Michael about it the next time I saw him and he burst out laughing. So now, when ever Michael has the French tulips, we both say "You have the French tulips?". Guess you had to be there...still works for us though. :)
For lighting in my mini studio, I have 4 clamp lamps. Two each have a 100w halogen bulb and are attached to white poster boards above the shooting area and the other two each have a 150w halogen bulb are are attached to the base of the shooting area. I move these as necessary for optimal lighting of the subject(s). The top two on the poster have more mobility as I can attach them around a 180° perimeter of the sides and front of the poster board. The bottom two are a bit more limited and can just be move from the front to back of the sides of the shooting area.
I have a piece of black velvet hung on the back of the shooting area. It is always there (and still needs replacement....someday soon, I think).
I try to keep the subject as far away from the backdrop as possible and also keep the light off of it. This is not always possible as the shooting area size just will not allow it. Particularly the 12" depth of the area.
Setting the black point in levels helps this and I pick a point near the subject since the black is often brighter there. Also, you can check the brightest black area by doing invert and see if there are any dark points in the background and setting the black point there to get the darkest black (there was none in the inversion of this, I just checked and the background was very uninform).
Also in this after my initial processing (adjustment layers for levels, brightness/contrast and hue/saturation, another layer of hue/saturation converting to gray scale and another layer each of levels and brigthness/contrast and sharpen) I found the bear grass needed some brightening. I thought the tulips and stems were bright enough, so I masked them and did a curves adjustment on the rest of the image to brighten the grass. (Also note the majority of all my processing is done in PSElements 3.0 to which I was able to add curves, selective color and channel mixer and also has about 2 dozen plugins that I won, were free or that I have purchased. I will use Paint Shop Pro 9 from time to time as well and have an updated version of it to add to my system someday.)
The set up of this was dictated by the condition of the tulips. One of the stems of one of the tulips bent and the flower fell to the side of the stem. I used the other flower to hold it up and shot to exclude the bend in the stem. I think I also used the top two lights only positioned in the front of the shooting area. I have one piece of poster board that is parallel to the front of the base of the shooting area and another piece of poster board above it that extends about 6" beyond the base of the shooting area.
I think that is about it. If you have any other questions, or if I thouroughly confused you, let me know.
Thx.
This is just me, but I think this shot would be better with a squarish crop. I really like the downward diagonal of the tulips and the grass behind them, but the stuff at the top really isn't necessary. Just MNSHO. Great notes. Thanks for sharing your technique.
WOW is that jsut awesome or what? What did you use for your background to get it so dark and your flower to bright. I would really like to know how this setup went. Perfect, just perfect. I love it.
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