Roses on a Blanket

THAT SOFT LOOK

My husband was sick so I decided to drop by a florist's shop and check in on their flowers. It was towards the end of a Friday afternoon and the above roses were $1.00 each. Boy did I have fun photographing roses that weekend!

The above roses are resting on a creamy colored blanket.

The only thing I did on this image was to smudge everything and clone a few places.

When I was entering competition this never won any awards, but this image got my highest score in 4 state competition - it got a score of 91.


Challenge for today:

Bring out the beauty in flowers in a simple setting.

Mosaic Vase

COLORFUL MOSAIC GLASSWARE

Mosaic glassware is beautiful with light shining upon it....however......it pretty well has to be empty in order to get the best advantage of light bouncing off of it. I have photograph the above vase many times, but most of the time I have flowers in it.

Anyway, back to the photo. The background I used for this image is the same I used for the image I posted on August 18.

For the flowers I used a couple of roses which were past their prime and placed them in front of the vase.

After I photographed the image and got it into the computer I placed a textured image I had created and placed it as a layer upon the image I had just photographed. Because I only wanted the final result to look a little like a painting, I adjusted the opacity of the textured layer so that only a bit of it was showing up on the original photograph.


Challenge for today:

Remember you can still photograph flowers which are past their prime. Try it.

Tulips and Glassware

HAVING FUN IN YOUR CREATIVITY!

This may not look too creative, but for me having the glass plate in an upright position in front of a glass jar is being creative.

For me this was just a fun photo shoot experimenting with clear glass and tulips/daffodils. I actually have quite a few versions of all of this and I'll be sharing at least one more version further on.

Anyway, the background in the original image was white poster board.

After I got the image into the computer I took a textured image I had created which is just made up of colors. I then darkened it quite a bit before I placed it as a layer on the image I had just photographed. Then after quite a bit of mixing and erasing and adding back onto the original image, I got the above look.

It looks kinda wild and modern and I like the final result.


Challenge for today:

Experiment with positioning glassware in unusual positions.

Roses in a Cookie Jar

USING UNUSUAL ITEMS

The one thing about looking at magazines - you gain new ideas. However using a cookie jar was entirely of my own thinking.

Now actually this isn't a very good picture - the roses look too pale. Yet, I like the image because I used an antique cookie jar AND the background is one of my own images printed out to a size 12" by 18" in length.

Nothing special was done to the image except smudging the foreground material a bit.

Challenge for today:

Once again, try your hand at printing out and use one of your own images as the background.

Morning Glories and Other Flowers

LETTING THE MATERIAL GUIDE THE PHOTO SHOOT!

I had a soft, pastel colored night gown. I love it; however when you start using clothes as a part of the background/foreground, you generally are limited on how much material you actually have to use in the picture.

Anyway, I was willing to take the risk and I helped minimize my photography problem by using the material only in the foreground and I used white poster board for the background.

I'm not a floral arranger and the flowers in the vase proves it, but I do like the way the morning glories are arranged on the material. (Remember, morning glories tear easily and they are called morning glories for a reason.)

After I got the shot I wanted and downloaded the image into the computer, I got out a textured image I had created and placed that as a layer. With such light colors on the background/foreground it was easy to adjust the opacity of the layer and get just enough of a "painting" look.


Challenge for today:

Start thinking about photographing some morning glories - the blossoms are large and they can fill up a lot of space in an image.

Hollyhocks and Peppermint

HOLLYHOCKS AREN'T FUN TO ARRANGE!

I love it when flowers have large blossoms because they take up a lot of space.....And to be able to photograph flowers which seem SO much a part of the past - WOW!!!!

BUT.......hollyhocks DO have major photographing problems.

1. The flower stems are extremely tall - some over 6 feet!
2. Their seed pods makes the stems top heavy which causes the stem to twirl around and difficult to arrange in a vase.
3. When you are in the flower garden you pretty much have to decide which stem to cut into. A stem may have over 25 unopened buds on it, 3 blossoms in full bloom, 1 blossom starting to open, and 7 seed pods. And everything seems to be randomly placed on the stem. You might have 1 full blossom 5 inches down from the top of the stem.....then another flower in full bloom 7 inches further down........
4. And hollyhocks are biannual.

Now back to the above image.

I chose a few stems which had blossoms close to the top. Because the blooms were toward the top, I was able to leave most of the stem still intact with the plant for further blooming.

I then picked some fresh peppermint to add a different color to the picture and to add more foliage to the image.

I chose cream color material for the foreground and background because I knew I was going to add a light colored textured background later with the computer.

After I shot the picture I wanted, I downloaded it into the computer and placed a textured layer over the hollyhock image. I adjusted the opacity and then I went into Photoshop Elements 3 and used the pastel filter. Because I wanted to offset the brightness of the pastel image, I went back and made a layer of the pastel filter and placed it over the combined textured layer/hollyhock image and then adjusted the pastel image's opacity.


Challenge for today:

Hurry up and plant those hollyhock seeds. You still might be able to get some blooms next year. But you have to hurry now!!!!!!

Oranges and Flowers

GET SOME FRUIT INTO THE PICTURE!

Many paintings use the combination of fruit and flowers and you can too. If you don't have any in your yard, next time you go to the store just purchase several oranges, apples, etc. Of course you should know ahead of time how you will use the fruit in your photo shoot.

In order to minimize the cost of purchasing fresh produce, it helps when you plan on using a small vase. A small vase means you don't have to have a lot of space to fill up with flowers and fruits/vegetables.

Now on to the above image. The vase I used in the image wasn't too much bigger in height than the oranges I used.

For the background material, I used my favorite all around Wal-Mart purchased material. It is VERY WIDE and I have at least 3 yards of it. This gives me a lot of moving around room. One thing I love about about this material is the coloring. It has different shades of brown, yellow, red, etc., in it.

One of the hard things about still life images is trying to make everything seem like it ISN'T a still life and trying to keep it from being boring. Somehow peeling one of the oranges and leaving what I peeled on the table beside the orange makes it seem more realistic and not boring.


Challenge for today:

Check out the fruits and vegetables available and try your hand at combining them into an image with flowers.