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Light and shades of grey
Shades of grey in interaction with light: this is a theme for monochromatic images. For a long time I wanted to photograph an egg against a white background. The idea was stimulated by photos, mostly of people I know personally. Geometric, white-colored bodies from the mathematical collection would also be fun for me. Unfortunately, access is not as easy for me as with an egg.
Light and shades of grey © Julian Köpke On the left side the egg is brighter than the background, on the right side it is the other way round. The background itself loses a little brightness from the left to the right, but is brighter than the the egg on the right. The contrast changes. There is no clearly defined shadow for this setup. The same is true in the next photograph.
White egg on a white background © Julian Köpke With the help of a simple light source whose color temperature does not matter after conversion into a black and white image, a soft shadow can be achieved if the source is not point-shaped.
Shadow cast of an egg © Julian Köpke 
Shadow cast of three eggs on white © Julian Köpke -
Alstromeria
With daylight and a lightbox I took the cut off flower of an Alstromeria. With the lens I’m able to approach the bloom on approximately 20 cm. The blossom then fills almost the entire sensory. The ratio of the mapping is thus approximately 1:1.
The quality of the RAW images is convincing in itself. The creation of the finished HDR takes place in a combination of manual and automated steps.
RAW conversion is done using CaptureOne, HDR processing is done manually in Photoshop. Further, I generated two automated HDR developments using HDR Efex Pro 2 and Photomatix Pro 6 and layered them in. Some of the original color is transferred from the daylight image with the lightbox switched off.
Alstromeria (Peruvian lily) © Julian Köpke -
RAW stocks
A small stock of raw footage is always lying on my laptop. My florist had been able to give us a few flowers, some of which were sacrificed after a couple of days on my lightbox. These days in a hospital I benefit while the healing remains to be seen.
Poppy blossom on a lightbox © Julian Köpke Is it possible to retain the idea of a picture for a long time ? What happens to the colors when you no longer have the originals in front of your eyes ? The blossom of the peonies looked like a living eye staring at me, not necessarily a human, maybe an animal.
Yellow peonie © Julian Köpke The tulip offered a wild confusion of petals. Unfortunately, it was monochrome orange.
Orange tulip © Julian Köpke The amaryllis showed an incredibly intense red. I managed to show the intensity best on a black background than on a white one. I use the inversion of the L-channel in Lab color mode.
Red amaryllis on a lightbox with a black background © Julian Köpke 
Red amaryllis on a lightbox © Julian Köpke -
Lockdown flower shots
Our flower shops are sold out or closed. There’s nothing new to buy. Thank God. This allows me to take a closer look a t the seasonal flowers we have at home.
Photographing a white amaryllis against a white background I found particularly attractive in the last few days. Because it also contains many colors that you can bring out.
Concerning color a less courageous image is the left one, only shadows and some etheral green from inside the flower. Using Lab color mode and some ideas of my friend Harold Davis this image can get more pizzazz, as shown on the right hand side.
White amaryllis on lightbox © Julian Köpke 
The colors of a white amaryllis on lightbox © Julian Köpke The plant broke off and had to be placed in a vase, but there it developed surprisingly well and even quite symmetrically, giving me the impression of antennas that listen into space because they look similar tho those with which Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation. A lightbox as background is easy to realize with a LED for the ceiling that you can get in any hardware store.
Floral symmetry with white amaryllis © Julian Köpke The blossoming red amaryllis has two sides, so I had the chance to photograph them both. In my eyes, one side resembled a dinosaur’s head and upper neck as it is about reach for food. Loosely based on an Arabic proverb: „If you see the dinosaur’s tongue, don’t think he’s smiling“.
Budding Amaryllis © Julian Köpke 
Budding Amaryllis © Julian Köpke -
Lockdown flowers
Yesterday was a chance to buy flowers for my lightbox before a new virus induced „lockdown“ takes place. Flowers on a lightbox exhibit an illusion of transparency when photographed either as HighKey image or HDR bracket sequence.
I prefer to process my bracketed photographs manually, because there is no possibility to learn how automated HDR software really works. On top of my layer stack I put one up to three HDR software results to layer them in if appropriate.
Yellow gerbera HDR on an lightbox © Julian Köpke Photographing flowers is a way to cope with the situation being locked in in a house instead of traveling or meeting friends. Our house looks like a flower store, every now and then we find new compositions. At the end, there is a print.
Red chrysanthemum and yellow gerbera © Julian Köpke A composition of flowers often suggests something, not with the eye, but with the inner vision. That’s the fun of it. There are so many compositions yet undone.
Bouquet of yellow gerbera © Julian Köpke My friend Harold is using petals for compositions. I often shy away from cutting off the flowers or tearing out the petals. I was happy to do it today with a fading dark red rose.
Red rose petals © Julian Köpke Christa, my wife, loves tulips. They may resemble a dream on a lightbox, like balloons taking off for flight. To catch the whole composition I’d either had to climb up a ladder with my 120mm macro lens or change the lens to a 80mm focal length (which I did).
Dream of tulips on a lightbox © Julian Köpke -
Dahlia, my love
Dahlia, my love. Flowers that make us forget the burden of a moment. Photographed each of them alone and as a pair. I tested HighKey shots instead of HDR, in the background different white tones.
The result did not leave me alone. Afterwards I wanted to try my hand at photographing a hen’s egg to study shades of different white (basically grey and yellow) tones. Unfortunately this did not happen today due to an emergency examination.
Red Dahlia II (single shot) © Julian Köpke 
Two Dahlias in a white vase © Julian Köpke More flowers to be seen in my Flickr-Album Flowers.
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Reflection II
Most of what we do see with our eyes is a reflection. Any light from a bouquet of flowers is just reflection. Looking through a bottle shows beside reflection some refraction. The only exception, where we don’t see reflected light is e.g. offered by an open fire or a light bulb. The sight of a star also shows direct light, which is usually subject to refraction due to the atmosphere.
Our eyes seem to absorb the light when we see. In fact, they can also reflect the incident light. We know this phenomenon from cat images that we have mistakenly photographed with a flash light.
Sitting in front of me my right eye is on the viewers left side and the left eye is on its right side. The instrument uses a red and a green laser at a harmless energy dose.
Fundus of right eye seen in red and green laser light © Julian Köpke 
Fundus of left eye seen in red and green laser light © Julian Köpke With different wave lengths of a laser an ophthalmologist is able to see different structures of the fundus and uses this property for diagnostic purposes. Looking at the green color only that stems from the green laser, the result is a monochrome image that shows vessels of the surface of the retina and smalls nerves joining the papilla.
Fundus of right eye seen in green laser light © Julian Köpke 
Fundus of left eye seen in green laser light © Julian Köpke Looking at the red channel displaying the reflections of the red laser light, monochrome images show deep vessels behind the retina.
Fundus of right eye seen in red laser light © Julian Köpke 
Fundus of left eye seen in red laser light © Julian Köpke Beside the medical point of view there is an aesthetic one, too. Dr. Gösele, to whom I owe these beautiful pictures, confirmed to me the impression of an astronomical night shot, which other viewers also feel. With a courageous crop you get there:
At a certain crop the fundus of a human eye seen in laser light resembles and emission nebula with a star in its center. © Julian Köpke This is how the central part of my sensor looks like when creating photographs or X-rays. My wife immediately urged me not to fall into a narcissistic trap ….
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Chestnuts X-ray mammography photo
I hav been looking forward to the mammography of these chestnuts a whole week. It was almost too late to find some specimen that had not yet been trampled or eaten. Once again it was helping hands that made this picture possible for me.
It was difficult to get an attractive composition. Indeed some skills have to be developed to place the chestnuts – because they really hurt. The sensor was too small to x-ray the whole composition at once. The solution was a mosaic with two tiles.
The result is convincing to me. The viewer may feel the thorns looking at the image.
Chestnut X-ray mammography photo © Julian Köpke -
Stages of a print
„Print early – print often“: important advice given by Charles Cramer. With my battery of my Nikon empty we strolled along a cornfield. A broken corn cob in a mature field suddenly caught my attention. The characteristic envelopes were partially peeled off. Red threads, which children use for playing as hair, hung tangled down. So I took my iPhone to get this image done.
Cornfield Ruit © Julian Köpke Beside the original with rogue disturbing lights I did some dodging and burning to enhance the print. This first step is the most important before getting into any other filtering process:
Cornfield with "rogue lights" © Julian Köpke 
Cornfield with compensated "rouge lights" © Julian Köpke -
Farewell
With flowers we create feelings and express feelings. With flowers we want to elicit feelings. If they aren’t just a comfortable souvenir, that is not suitable for the wall or the shelf.
Their color is not enough to stimulate our emotions. It’s also their shape and a composition. I took a friend to my favorite florist to design a bouquet from the available flowers end of September. The central component were two specimens of a cockscomb, one in red and one in purple.
Celosia or cockscomb © Julian Köpke A not insignificant part of the enjoyment is the creation of the composition, together with a sensitive florist. At home I photographed the bouquet with the horizontally aligned, rectangular Lightbox in the background. It’s, of course, an HDR image, combined of shots with the Lightbox switched on and off. A final greeting of the noticeably farewell summer.
Bouquet with celiosa © Julian Köpke Farewell has always been a theme of flowers. Without color, subject only to the effect of light, exposing a feeling for the original color, the black-and-white image of a flower becomes intensified. The same day at sunset, with an exposure speed of 6 minutes at ISO 50, I obtained the following picture, which made me immediately think of The Godfather: I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse.
Rose © Julian Köpke
