Few days ago we in a private concert I got this lovely flower, a Strelitzia reginae, as a memory of the evening. Quite an unconventional gift.
Strelitzia
Of course I immediately wanted to picture it despite my lack of experience in still life. My idea was to highlight its crazy shapes and colors.
Strelitzia
It’s a rather large flower, some 20 cm wide, so there’s no need of dedicated marco equipment but you may benefit from a large white background.
Lacking any professional background or even a white wall at reasonable distance, I had to revert to the yellowish wall of my sleeping room: not what you’d like to use to highlight the crazy colors of this great flower. Additionally the wall had a very disturbing texture.
Solution was found trying to keep the background as out of focus as possible, not easy without losing the focus on the entire flower, and in post processing: tweaking the white balance to turn the wall white and pushing the colors with a cross process filter.
Strelitzia
While far from perfect, I’m satisfied of keeping the colors right while cancelling the bad background. If you want to know the detail feel free to ask me here below. I tried also to get closer: you loose the shape but can still enjoy an explosion of great colours.
Strelitzia
I hope you enjoyed!
Enrico De Rogatis 