This is a flower of the Christmas Cactus which, as the name suggests, typically blooms around Christmas time. The flowers made a late appearance this year. Rather than blooming for Christmas, they timed their arrival perfectly for Valentine's Day.
@wordsmith Thank you, Teresa. The background turned out to be a happy accident. The cactus was sitting on the floor below a window with sunlight streaming onto it. The wall directly behind the cactus is a medium brown color. I took the photo in front of the brown wall but when I looked at the shots on the computer later, the brown wall now looked black. I love the black, too, but don't really understand why it happened. Maybe because the light on the flower was so bright that it put what was behind it into a shadow? Sorry for this long explanation. I've been pondering it myself.
@pflaume I bit you're right about the bright light causing it. It's good to know that brown can show up as black, as it is often challenging to find an actual black background. Thanks! Will have to experiment.
Nice. Your supposition is correct about the background Lisa. The exposure of the flower (white = bright = fast exposure which will automatically underexpose the wall) although if you look at this large you will still see the brown tint in the wall.
Yep. It is slightly brown, looking dark because the light didn't strike the wall directly. I like the effect very much. We have a red one in bloom now.
Beautiful shot Lisa, love the black in the back :)
On my photo of the day I used only natural light. One window in the front on his right side, one from the back on his right side, and one in front from the left. It`s not a lot of light in Norway on afternoon during the winter, but I use my 50 mm f/1.4 who allows me to shoot in bad light :)
Thank you so much for your comment!
On my photo of the day I used only natural light. One window in the front on his right side, one from the back on his right side, and one in front from the left. It`s not a lot of light in Norway on afternoon during the winter, but I use my 50 mm f/1.4 who allows me to shoot in bad light :)
And thanks to all who added to the tech side, I like that...:-)