Flowers On Black: Please Share Yours & How You Create Them

I just shoot them on a black background. Makes editing easier.

Greetings Rose, your flowers are stunning to view, on an occasion I will take a black mat board and place it directly behind the flower I want to accent pop out, and then on many occasions I seek out the flowers and examine the natural back ground and capture a total black flora with the natural lighting provided from the indirect lightning.

here is one to start.

Rose -- the process you describe is pretty much what I employ in using a black background -- as we've discussed in other threads - I also use Photo Impact -- the extraordinarily versatile & cost effective photo editing program

This is a scan of a Bird of Paradise -- laid directly on the scanner face, posts processed with a Redfield/fractalius filter effect applied.




~ Carmen Hathaway ~

Hello Rose, here is another flower which I used the natural background, at times is there are any imperfections with the natural background, I will adjust the darkness in Picasa such as this example.



great discussion topic.....

The ones below had natural dark or black backgrounds that I just enhanced to make it pure black.

Wow...thanks everyone!

A couple of questions.... I've also used a black background (such as a black book) when I've actually picked a flower and brought it in the house, John and Michael...are the flowers you shoot cut, or are they still on the plant when you put the black background behind them.

Michael, I'm not sure what you mean here "I seek out the flowers and examine the natural back ground and capture a total black flora with the natural lighting provided from the indirect lightning."

Carmen, that is a brilliant idea about scanning actual flowers. I never thought of that....but, pardon my ignorance, how can you close the scanner lid and not crush the flower? And yes, I love PhotoImpact too! Great program!

Gunter, how did you achieve your flowers black background? It's lovely

Thanks -- re: idea ------ when scanning objects I use a black dropcloth & don't close the lid....

Try other colors too -- I've scanned objects with stained glass sheets overlayed also.

Interesting results with crumpled newspaper & other papers or cloth.

I'm of that mindset that there are several uses for everything -- what it's made for & what you can do with it ;)

There are many artists scanning objects -- some call it scanography -- I just call it having fun :)


~ Carmen Hathaway ~

Seriously, I SO want to try that now....a friend gave me an amazing new scanner and I'm going to give this a try. Thanks! What DPI do you usually scan at? I like to do 600.

This is a flower I picked and put in front of a black book and then lit it with a flashlight from in front and below.

Very nice, Crystal and others! Keep them coming. I love these.

Rose, my examples may not be what you're looking for as they all happened to come out with dark or black backgrounds naturally. I suppose with the right settings you can sometimes achieve a similar effect. I have also purposely manipulated the background for a dark or black background. There is more than one way to do this, possibly depending on the effect you desire. A basic concept would be to select the flower and or parts you want to not be black, and inverse the selection so that you will only color the other areas. Depending on your software, you may have other adjustments for fine tuning the selection or touching up the edges. You may want to use a blur tool or filter for certain areas for instance. Of course, depending on the composition you may find it more feasible instead of selecting the flower, to select the background... Which ever would be easier to achieve. Some people may also try and use layering and masking, then painting with white or black to reveal or hide the area underneath. You may even find cutting and pasting could help achieve your goal, but whatever technique you incorporate will be what works best for you as it relates to your experience. If the background is already pretty dark, I sometimes just use the burn tool to darken it further to my liking.

You may find many video and even text tutorials to help with these methods online.




Yes, you can paint a piece of cardboard (as smooth as you can find), and position it behind the flower (or other subject) you're photographing. Even if it's not black but a solid color would make it easier later to select and manipulate whatever color background you choose in post processing.

600 dpi's a good base setting -- for very small items I'll experiment with higher settings -- just make sure to select a proper scan size i.e. 4" x 6' -- a full face scan could slow things down at very high dpi

Thanks Brian...I thought about the "selecting" and or "inverting" the selection but there are sooo many variations in the backgrounds that wouldn't it only select one particular color rather then the whole background? And if the background were all one color, I'm thinking it's easier to just "bucket fill" it black? Sometimes I like to use the "portrait" setting on my camera as it blurs the background and makes changing it to black easier.

BTW, your lovely examples are exactly what I'm looking for, as are all the other examples by everyone else too.

Thanks Carmen!

All hand drawn,charcoal,white chalk,enhanced for pod

Very nice, Vivian! And perfect for the Fall tool

Rose, when using the selection tool, there may be a few to choose from. Not all are equal. The "Quick Selection Tool" is generally the far superior selection tool. As a beginner I didn't get beyond the "Magic Wand Tool", but the "Quick Selection Tool" is much better in most cases. Of course much depends on the image for selecting the proper tool.

Thank you,Rose....

Here are Tulips given to me during the recent battle with flu, by my John....got out my suede -finish soft black cloth,the camera,etc,and they actually stayed still for me,lol....

Rose,

Here are a few that Is hot on my porch/deck. I just used a black cloth from any Sewing/materila store and the position it far enough away from the flower, to not capture any details and then I can darken it later in Photoshop. Not crazy about my orchids and they may disappear, to contrasty for me.






If I did this right, the next two are old scans, maybe 10 years old or more from my flatbed scanner and again a black cloth to keep the back of the scanner cover, which is white from showing up. This was the "rage" 10-15 years ago!






Rich So Franco

Lovely! I have a textured velvet that I sometimes use as a backdrop but the light seems to "catch" on the design and it doesn't turn out right. Yours turned out perfect!

And, Brian, thanks...I'll check to see if I have different types of selection tools in my programs....I hadn't really thought of that...I've use the "magic wand" mostly myself.

You're welcome Rose -- since we're sharing technique -- have a visit to this 3D modeling project I posted today -- just like scanning -- might just get you intrigued. ;)

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=1478204

I shot this in the wild. It was growing in some sage and wheatgrass--rather messy background, but I really liked the flower. So, I cut it out and filled in the black, same as you with the bucket. It would have been easier if I had something black with me, but I was hiking and not carrying any black poster board, lol.

LOL, Rich...love the "So Franco" at the end. Guess you must be related to my husband, eh?

Those all turned out wonderful. Interesting to learn about scanning these from you and Carmen....maybe tomorrow, when I can pick some flowers, I'll try this!

Beautiful result Loree...lovely flower. I've never seen one of those before.

Camen, thanks I'll go check out your link now!

Rose,

Here are a few older images. All these had detail in the background,in the shadows and I pulled the shadows down to hide anything showing and in a few cases, used the burn/dodge toll to darken further. I try and find flowers that have a dark background to start with and that makes it much easier to end up with that background,



Rich

A black painted board and an ordinary flashlight.

Color separation - paint color back in.

Rose, I don't use Photoshop, either. Mine pretty much have dark backgrounds already, but then I go around them with a dark tool in PhotoScape. It's tedious and time-consuming, and there is probably an easier way. (I have PS Elements, just haven't downloaded it.) These are my favorites.

I am so glad this thread is opened again. so much info to learn here. I don't have PS, so this is the best I could do . Mostly natural shadow, darkened shadows in Piccasa

FYI, there is a group here for photographic works with dark backgrounds that I recently joined. The technique is called Chiaroscuro.

http://fineartamerica.com/groups/chiaroscuro-group-.html

Thanks Patricia, love all your photos I don't think I have ever tried putting a flower against a black background but it looks wonderful. I did pick up a few tips somewhere a few years ago though about dropping a litter glitter onto your flowers to give them an extra bit of something special, haven't tried it out yet though.

Absolutely exquisite works of art being shown, with a variety of techniques! Please keep them coming! THANKS ABBIE for reopening this thread for me!

Here are a few of my latest pieces. I took these on a black velvet background but then had to use the paint/bucket tool in PhotoImpact to blacken the background up some more. Then I added various special effects/textures to these.

Mary, I love that idea of sprinkling glitter on flowers! I've never thought of doing that...but will try it now. Thanks for tip!

Edward, gorgeous image! How do you do/what is "color separation" and what program can you do it in? Or is something a DSLR camera can do automatically? And when you "paint color back in" how do you get such precise placement of it? Sorry if these are "dumb" questions, but I have a lot to learn and this thread is really helping!

Great ideas everyone! Though I am not a photographer as many of you are I still would love to try some of these techniques for a good learning experience. Thanks!

You are quite welcome, Mary!

I try to shoot them already on dark backgroud and then I slightly edit them. This is one of my favorites orchids piece.

@ Mary J Tait, thank you for your nice compliment. Glitter and flowers do seem to go together, although I haven't tried it. I've heard you can spray flowers with a mister to give them a wet look, also. Mine are not sprayed, but I'm going to try that in the future.

@ Rose, your pieces are beautiful. Isn't it fun when you find something you truly enjoy doing?

Color separation - I use OnOne Perfect Effects. You can paint in or out various filter effects. I use "Reduce Color" which takes away all the color and then paint out where I want the color to be.

You could do this in Photoshop also by creating a layer mask. I'm sure there is a YouTube video on it.

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So much easier to create the black in camera. As I said, I basically create a deep cave of black in the background by opening the furnace room door, putting a black sheet across (black poster board would work too) and then light from the side so the light doesn't go into the "cave".

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On this one the back ground was a very saturated blue. The towel was a very saturated red. The dog is white. By playing with the color channel sliders in Lightroom I could control how the colors came out in monochrome.

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/i-hate-mondays-edward-fielding.html

Thanks Edward for the helpful explanation! God bless!

You don't need Photoshop to create black backgrounds. I just put my camera (Pentax K-7) on "spot exposure, then set it to manual exposure, and crank down the exposure a lot. Samples below.

http://fineartamerica.com/images-small-5/christmas-cactus-mark-r-whitney.jpg

http://fineartamerica.com/images-small-5/daisy-3-mark-r-whitney.jpg

http://fineartamerica.com/images-small-5/bouquet-mark-r-whitney.jpg

I hope these shots show up. For some reason it's not letting me cut and paste the link when clicked on on my page.

A well lit flower with the background in shade will naturally go black. Then I clone out any imperfections in the background with photoshop.

This is an oil an oil painting and I absolutely love flowers on black backgrounds in any medium.

Mark, you need to click in that image link box and press "Control C" (or Command C for a Mac?) and then come into this thread and press "Control V" (or Command V) to paste the image link code in a new reply. You won't see the actual images until you click submit.

Beautiful images and enjoying learning new techniques. BTW, I don't have a DSLR camera so I can't do a lot of the "fancier" things with my camera unfortunately.

A guy on Flickr turned me on to this: http://haroldrossfineart.wordpress.com/light-painting-tools-and-resources/

You don't have to be as fancy about it as is detailed here. I've used objects on a black denim shirt and a five dollar LED flashlight to do some passable work. I plan on developing the method further, but it's possible to jump right in with minimal gear.

This is the Flickr page of the fellow who was most helpful in directing me to this technique. He does some very good work.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mwnful/

You're right, Penny, I know... well lit is the key. I am still practicing this. Mark, thank you for the spot exposure tip!! Strangely enough, this worked beautifully for me when photographing a music concert in a dark indoor venue. Not sure why it worked, but I'm not going to question it.

I mostly use a black velour fabric as a background with natural daylight. I edit out anything else that shows up. Thanks for posting about this. It's helped me learn some new techniques.

This is one I did in colored pencil, on white paper and I did all the black myself. As far as the photography involved I did this from a reference photo that I took of a daisy my mother-in-law got in a Mothers Day Bouquet. I chose which flower I liked the best, and took it outside so I could shoot it in natural light. To get the maximum darkness in the background I took it to the shade made by my house, it was an extremely sunny day, I placed the flower right on the edge of where the shade met direct sunlight and shot it so the shade was in the background and the flower was in direct sunlight. It was nearly black that way, then when I uploaded it to my computer I bumped up the contrast a bit to get maximum darkness.

Rose, thank you very much for reminding me. Hopefully this will work. No Photoshop here - :-)







Hope you like them. There are more in my portfolio.

Such exquisite works being shown here. Thank you ALL!