Friday Flower Fiesta (3/15/13) — Imperfect orchids

Okay.

Back to orchids for our Friday Flower Fiesta today.

One of the problems with orchids is that the flowers last so long.

Long-lasting flowers are subject to greater physical damage than a day-blooming flower.

The following orchid pictures all had something wrong with them, usually a big dead spot on a petal (which I fixed using the Spot Healing Brush Tool in Photoshop CS6) or a piece of a petal missing (which I repaired using the Clone Stamp Tool).

In some cases, the flower was in front of an extraordinarily bright window, or there were weird colors around the flower that drew your attention away from the flowers. I guess a little fashion sense can teach you when flowers clash with their surroundings…….. When I had weird colors in the picture, I often highlighted the flower I wanted to focus on, inverted the selection so that the flower was the only thing not selected, and then added a Black & White layer. Sometimes the effect is striking, as I discovered in a recent post where I had this picture:

Look carefully and you can see that the white areas were blown out in the original picture. Changing the background to black & white, though, allows you to focus on what I want you to focus on.

In other cases, a completely black & white background didn’t work (in my opinion), so I played with the opacity of the black & white layer to bring just a wee bit of color back into the background.

Usually I can just add a background layer and decrease the brightness and increase the contrast to make the focus flower stand out.

Remember that, as my wise old grandmother used to say, “What comes out of the camera is just the basics to start with.” Don’t be afraid to experiment to make your pictures better, and don’t be afraid to be a photographic artist.

In the following pictures, I’ll tell you what I did to the background.

Without further achoo adoo adieux, today’s Friday Flower Fiesta:

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
(I think this would have been better with a black & white
background layer with a wee bit of color being added back in.)

Background layer with decreased brightness and increased contrast
(I think this would also have been better with a black & white
background layer with a wee bit of color being added back in.
This was the picture that caused me to explore black & white layers.)

This was my first attempt at a black & white background
layer with just a wee bit of color being added back in.

I liked the previous picture so much that I decided to do
the rest of the pictures using the black & white background layer
with a little bit of color being added back in.

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