I wrote a post about some roses that I had in the house a little over a week ago. Then I kept the flowers until well after their scent had faded. As you can imagine, it was so that I could get some photos. Here is one that I shot a few days ago:
What I was thinking about was light. I knew I wanted to shoot in the early morning light, to take advantage of that lovely tinge of the first light of the day. In this case, my tripod was mandatory, you see the exposure time of two seconds? there is no way for me to get a clear shot while holding the camera. So, with my camera set up on the tripod, I worked a bit with my f-stop. I wanted the roses to be fairly in focus, but I wanted the raindrops on the window behind to appear as bokeh. F/8 was the answer for this photo shoot.
So then to the editing, cropping was my first step. I then created a color version and this black and white version:
You can see that I have cropped out the left side of the photo, just a bit too much going on there in my opinion. The slightly warm tint to this version I got by sliding up the temperature slider in Lightroom. I’ve also added a bit of grain to this version.
With both a color and black and white version created, from Lightroom I opened them as layers in a single file in Photoshop. Here is the final version of that experiment:
To achieve this look, I have the black and white version as the top layer but I have lowered its opacity. I did trying adding a mask to add in more color to the roses, but ended up not liking the effect. The original color of the roses seemed garish against the more muted background of this combined version.
What do you think of my versions? I added both the black and white and the combined version to my portfolio on Picfair. I like them, does it bother you that the roses are not their original color? have you ever tried combining black and white and color photos? the result can be lovely or jarring, it is interesting how varied the outcomes can be.
Cheers!
Excellent work on the combined version! 👍
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Thank you, I’m glad you like it.
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I love the final image with the combined versions. I notice so much more detail in the muted tones and nice contrast. I always enjoy hearing your process, thanks for sharing.
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The details were brought out a bit by increasing the shadows slider. It’s a nice feature that lets you lighten selectively.
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I love both! The original version is beautiful. I will never guess it was taken with 2 sec. very cool!
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Yes, thankfully the tripod was there to help, otherwise you might get a bit motion sick looking at the photo.
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I actually didn’t think the original colour of the roses was jarring, more like the colours held on its own. But agree that there is a bit too much going on there in the left, distracting from the beautiful bokeh on the other side. Really, really like the light pink version. It reminds me of strawberries and cream cake, lol. Very dreamy, very sweet. The clarity that shines through amidst the graininess is amazing.
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Actually, when I’m talking about jarring, I meant that when I tried to bring the original rose color into the pink version. In that version the color of the roses and the color of the background did not work. In real life, the roses were a beautiful color 🙂
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That is so true. Sometimes what you see on the photo is different to what you see in real life with your eyes. The lighting, and white balance might have something to do with it.
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I agree 🙂
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Yes, I like combining B&W and colour sometimes, or I fade the colours towards B&W.
My favourite is the third image.
Wishing yo a great weekend,
Dina x
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Thanks very much, I hope you have a good weekend as well.
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I think I need to learn how to use some editing programs. 🙂 Beautiful.
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Thanks 🙂
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The effect is stunning! Wow! I like it! Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you.
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Amy, as always, I so enjoy the look into your thoughts as you developed these images. At first, I thought I liked the original (red) rose photo the best, but then at the end the combined photo really captured my imagination. I had no idea you could overlay a black-and-white with a color image. Very nice!
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Thank you, this is an effect I work with every once in awhile. It is interesting to me in part because of the numbers of times when I think it will work but it doesn’t.
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Hah! That is also true for writing. Just the other day I wrote a piece that I thought was pretty good as I wrote it … and afterward there were many things about it that I liked, but the overall result was not as satisfying as I had hoped. Trial and error …!
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Exactly 🙂
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I like the colour versions best, but your cropping works really well. You are good using your camera properly, I’ve become increasingly lazy and use automatic settings most of the time!
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Thanks, I really felt the cropping was necessary for this image.
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The final image here is beautiful. I like the combination!
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Thank you very much.
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the B & W version is my fav all the way.
the flowers – esp to the right – have an outline to them – I kept going back to them
xxoo
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Thanks 🙂
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Lovely! Thanks for sharing all of your shooting and editing information. I will enjoy comparing techniques and learning from you.
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Thank you for your visit and comment 🙂
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