Art Deco flowers
Flowers are an enduringly popular subject for photography. Some of the most memorable images were created in the 1920s and 1930s by two remarkable photographers, Tina Modotti and Imogen Cunningham. Influenced by Modernism and Art Deco, their flower photographs had a wonderful abstract quality.
Tight composition is typical of both photographers' flower images. Rather than showing displays of flowers in vases, they each cropped out the context in favor of focusing on individual flowers. Modotti is best known for pictures of closely gathered roses; Cunningham for immaculately lit botanical studies.
This bunch of roses was photographed every day for a week, sometimes in a bouquet, sometimes individually. No studio lights were usedthey were placed in a corner that caught natural, early evening light.
With a subject as subtle as a flower, it's often valuable to examine the color channels before converting the image to black and white. The keyboard shortcuts Ctrl/Cmd + 1, Ctrl/ Cmd + 2, and Ctrl/Cmd + 3 enable you to cycle through Red, Green, and Blue, then Ctrl/Cmd + - returns you to the RGB view. This rose was a lovely orange-pink, so the Blue channel was much too dark. A mix of red and green worked much better. In the Layers palette, click the "Create new fill or adjustment layer" icon and select Channel Mixer. Pay attention to achieving a full tonal range, rather than looking at the final image contrast. Fine-tune the contrast with another adjustment layer. Select Curves and drag the curve until the contrast looks right. Here, a gentle "S" curve boosted contrast a little, but also left the picture slightly soft and understated. With closeups of flowers, it's likely that brightly lit petals near the edges of the picture will be distracting. Fix this on a separate layer. Hold down the Alt/Opt key and click the "Create a new layer" icon in the Layers palette. Set the blending mode to Overlay and check the "Fill with Overlay-neutral color" checkbox. Activate the Brush tool (B) and make it softedged by pressing Shift + [a few times. Set the Foreground Color to black (D) and paint around the edges of the layer. You can adjust the overall effect by reducing the layer's opacity, duplicating it, or trying other blending modes, such as Soft Light and Pin Light. The difference is often subtle, as it should be. To replicate the warmer tones of palladium printing, hold down the Alt/Opt key and add a Curves adjustment layer. Call it Toning or Palladium. In the Red channel, click the curve twice, adding two points. While you can always drag curves and judge the resulting tone by eye, you can also use the keyboard for more precise control. Ctrl/Cmd + Tab cycles through each point on the curve so you can enter the Input/Output values manually, or with your arrow keys. For the Red channel, set the two points at 64/64 and 195/210-brightening the red midtones and highlights. Repeat the process for the Blue channel with three points at 65/50, 125/105, and 195/175.
Two pictures for the price of one: once you've shot your flowers, spray them with some water and you've got a fresh subject. If you forget, use the "glass tears" technique (see page 62) to add them in Photoshop.
Palladium-based photographic paper was becoming much more expensive in the 1920s, but it was ideally suited to soft, gentle subjects such as flowers. |
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