Explored high-key today with my gerbera daisy (they're guaranteed fresh for 5 days, but I promise no more gerbera pics this week!). Shot it in front of my upstairs window and then edited it a bit in camera raw. I'm not sure if I attained true high-key, as I just didn't have the stuff for the set-up from the tutorials I read on it. But it was fun to explore a bit anyhow. If anyone knows of any "high-key for the hobbyist" tutorials, let me know!
@gladysmg I think this shot, I overexposed +3 so that got the background mostly white - I was in my upstairs too, so the grass and whatnot was further away. Plus, it was an overcast/rainy day. So then in camera raw, I brought up the high end even more and ended up sucking most of the color out. I played around with it then and even turned it b&w, but then my husband suggested bring a hint of color back in. So quite a bit of editing! :)
Beautiful image the focus is amazing and high key really works. Also think the diffusion at the edges of flowerhead into white adds to the creativity of the image :- love it
This is one of my favs Mandy. How did you edit it? I have Photoshop but to be quite honest it confuses the hell out of me and I long to learn these sort of techniques, they really bring out the beauty of subjects such as flowers.
I shot it in RAW first of all - set it up in my upstairs window so the background was already pretty light. Shot it at +3 exposure and it was a bright red gerbera (from the pic a few days before). When I put it in Camera Raw, I brought up the higher end of the spectrum and played around with the settings in there until it ended up muting the colors quite a bit to where it was stark white background and very pale pink flower. Then, out of Camera Raw and directly in Photoshop, I painted in a little white around the edges of the flower to soften them and added in a small amount of white vignetting with the lens distortion filter to soften the bottom left corner (the other corners were white - I got rid of all hint of window/backyard colors when I brought up the high ends in Camera Raw.
Anyhow, back to Photoshop...then, I converted it to grayscale using this B&W action I really like. Husband liked it, but thought I should have at least a little color back in, so I took the b&w version and set it as a layer on top of the pink version and set that layer to soft light and lowered the opacity until I liked the mix. (That's actually one of the thingsI like to do to increase contrast - I did the same on my lemon picture - did a b&w version of the shot on soft light and decreased the opacity) And I might have played with the hue and contrast just a little more, but that's about it. It's more editing than I usually do, but I was just having fun with the art of it.
Oh thank you so much for taking the time to send all of this detail, not sure I can get my head around it just yet but it certainly has given me a few ideas to carry on with. I am still at the "beginners" stage when it comes to processing but I am enjoying the challenge and always willing to learn. Once again thank you Mandy.
@shirleytemple Thank you! I'm still not sure if I 100% "get" it. It's fun experimenting, though!
If you have time, please follow me. I'm a newbie here. Thanks! :)
I shot it in RAW first of all - set it up in my upstairs window so the background was already pretty light. Shot it at +3 exposure and it was a bright red gerbera (from the pic a few days before). When I put it in Camera Raw, I brought up the higher end of the spectrum and played around with the settings in there until it ended up muting the colors quite a bit to where it was stark white background and very pale pink flower. Then, out of Camera Raw and directly in Photoshop, I painted in a little white around the edges of the flower to soften them and added in a small amount of white vignetting with the lens distortion filter to soften the bottom left corner (the other corners were white - I got rid of all hint of window/backyard colors when I brought up the high ends in Camera Raw.
Anyhow, back to Photoshop...then, I converted it to grayscale using this B&W action I really like. Husband liked it, but thought I should have at least a little color back in, so I took the b&w version and set it as a layer on top of the pink version and set that layer to soft light and lowered the opacity until I liked the mix. (That's actually one of the thingsI like to do to increase contrast - I did the same on my lemon picture - did a b&w version of the shot on soft light and decreased the opacity) And I might have played with the hue and contrast just a little more, but that's about it. It's more editing than I usually do, but I was just having fun with the art of it.
Hope that wasn't too long winded!