This week I picked up a bundle of 2 dozen (!) red tulips at Trader Joe’s on Monday. They have been entertaining me all week as I play with photographing them in different ways. (I was also able to take a few of them down to my daughter’s house when dropping off some other things there. She said the surprise flowers made her smile when she got home from work and saw them.)
Besides being beautiful to look at, these flowers have made me dig deeper into my toolbox and to learn some new things about color.
Always Learning and Growing
A bouquet of red tulips—who would think that such a simple thing would be so hard to photograph correctly?
Over my years of photographing flowers, depicting the color correctly in my images is one of my biggest challenges. Even when I have set the white balance correctly in my camera some colors are just really HARD to represent digitally as my eye sees them. Reds and purples are the most difficult.
I made my first set of images using Auto-Color Balance in my camera, even though I know that the light in my dining room (where I photograph flowers) is challenging. Those images ended up looking pink on my computer screen, even though the tulips are plain old-fashioned red tulips, the kind with a beautiful black center.
It’s a good thing that I’m happy to be always learning and growing. I think that when you stop learning and stop growing, you stop being fully alive..
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” — Pablo Picasso
So many resources for learning…
Yesterday I watched 2 different YouTube videos that taught me new things about adjusting color and I read a couple of online articles about color adjustment. I’ve even put a little vase with a single tulip in it beside my computer screen so that I can compare what is on the screen to what my eyes see. After several experiments with in camera changes (setting custom color balance using my Passport Color Checker) and a few Lightroom tweaks I’m happy with that the color of my images matches what my eye sees.
Once I had the color challenge mastered (for today) I began playing with creating composites from some of my tulip photographs. Trying (and failing) caused me to create new images so that I could try again to create pleasing composites.
I began with a photo of tulips in a vase, then sized the image to be twice as wide as it was tall. In Photoshop, I created a square canvas and pasted in the image right side up in the top half, and upside down in the bottom half.
Then I made a copy of this layer and rotated it by 20 degrees and changed the blend mode to “Darken”. I masked out any obvious edges from the rotation, and made a copy of the new layer repeating the rotation, blend mode, and masking. After 16 layers I had this:
Playing around like this was fun. I had no specific objective in mind, other than wondering what I could do by duplicating, rotating and combining layers in different ways.
Simple Pleasures
Having fresh flowers in the house is one of my simple pleasures that I regularly indulge in. This time of year when tulips are plentiful, I love filling my house with tulips.
“A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different. And there’s room in the garden for every flower. You didn’t have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else’s on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. ”
―
A Feeling of Abundance
Such a small thing brings such a feeling of abundance.
“Nature is all abundant…Nature suggests hope, joy, abundance, belief, regeneration, allowance, sharing, love, beauty and acceptance.”
― Lessons from My Garden
How are you learning and growing? What simple pleasures do you enjoy?
May you walk in beauty.
“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
―
…
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holdingall that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary …— Mary Oliver, Excerpt from the poem Peonies
…
But all my life–so far–
I have loved best
how the flowers rise
and open, how
the pink lungs of their bodies
enter the fore of the world
and stand there shining
and willing–the one
thing they can do before
they shuffle forward
into the floor of darkness, they
become the trees.— Mary Oliver, Excerpt from the poem Moccasin Flowers
Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.
— Mary Oliver
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