A Scenic World

None of my flower shots are in a studio. With the exception of a Camilla I bought a year ago, none of them have even been taken inside. I don’t carry a black cloth with me when I shoot, so how do I get that black background?

This morning, I went out to show exactly how I do it. All macro shots were taken with the K200D and the Pentax D-FA 100mm Macro. All wide-angle shots were taken with the K100D and the Pentax DA 21mm (and please, don’t judge this lens by these photos - the K100D is sadly a bit broken at the moment). Both cameras had “contrast” pushed all the way in-camera. All macro shots were taken with the widest possible aperture. All shots are straight-out-of-the-camera unless noted.

The first well-lit plant I saw still had its morning dew.

Ah, but I wasn’t getting in close enough to get that background good and dark! Let’s go in a little closer:

This was one of the first flowers I came across this morning:

Right next to it was this flower:

Obviously, the second flower didn’t have that nice black background, but the following adjustments in Lightroom gave me what I was looking for:

Recovery: 60
Fill Light: 20
Blacks: 40
Clarity: 85
Highlights: -2
Lights: +31
Darks: +31
Shadows: -7

A healthy dose of vignette did the rest (-50 amount, with the midpoint at 18)

So where were these flowers, exactly?

They were side by side, right in the path of the sun. Heavy shadows behind them made for the background. Another shot of the setup, this time from above:

I continued my walk to see what else I could find. I passed up all kinds of beautiful flowers because the light wasn’t hitting them right. The light, as we’ll see, is all-important to getting the background.

I made my way to the duck pond, trying to find some good light. I was a little early for the sun, but I happened to spot this fern illuminated against some shadows:

See the shadows?

A few feet away were some reeds of some sort. I used the dark water behind them to get a dark background, but unless I wanted to stand in the water, I couldn’t get the composition quite right.

Here, a bit more post-processing:

Lightroom settings:

Blacks 5
Contrast +100
Clarity +92

The setup for this shot:

Finally, on my way home, I took one more shot of that abundant white flower. This time, I used a dark patch of shadows far behind it to get the background dark.

The flower:

I tend to underexpose white flowers, so I’d process this one a bit, even though the background is already where I want it.

Processed:

Lightroom settings:

Contrast: 50
Clarity: 87
Vibrance: 48
Highlights: +36
Lights: +14
Yellow Saturation: +40
Yellow Luminance: +60
Vignetting:
Amount: -100
Midpoint: 83

And the setup for this shot?

Let’s take a few steps back, shall we?

So, in summary, I’ve found the following things to be helpful when creating the “black background” effect:

• Light is all-important
• Get as close as you can while still framing wisely
• Use the widest possible aperture
• Utilize post-processing as needed

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 7:58 am and is filed under Photography Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.