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Gift
It had take a long time until I had chosen a beautiful floral arrangement and d the florist had bound it presentably. I was just about to complete the purchase when I noticed a wonderful Gladiole.
„I’ll give it to you for free of charge, it has already fully blossomed“, said the owner. My thanks to her are the following pictures of this flower, which I made with my lightbox in the background.
Gladiola © Julian Köpke 
Gladiola © Julian Köpke 
Gladiola © Julian Köpke -
Last hot summer days
The last hot summer days are noticeably less hot. Autumn shows up on my rose hips, which are still fed by the water of a vase. Over the course of the days her leaf green became increasingly discolored in autumn. I don’t want to believe it.
Delicate rose hips before autumn starts © Julian Köpke -
Artichoke
Melitta was looking for an image in her new kitchen. She felt a fusion image of a fruit basket to be too dark. The fusion image technique is not restricted to black and white or monochrome (FAQ: Fusion imaging). With only few structural content in the X-ray of the fruits I better inverted the background of the image and sponsored a golden backdrop like an ancient greek icon. You still can see some X-ray properties looking at the lychees or the bananas. As a print its appearance was best.
X-ray fusion photo of lychees and fruit in a wooden bowl © Julian Köpke Also appropriate for a kitchen would also be an image of an artichoke. If I put it on a lightbox, there is always some resemblance to a copperplate print, which I like personally. This blooming artichoke is a type of a food image, if you spend some phantasy.
Blooming artichoke © Julian Köpke A little change of perspective gives more direct access to the blooms. Every image shown in this blog entry is a combination of manual HDR and software assisted HDR. That way I get best results. The background helps to create the look and feel of ageing and simulating a print.
Blooming artichoke © Julian Köpke The artichoke presented above has some resemblance to a thistle. By chance we have a place not far from home with lots of them. Old railroad tracks had been removed and converted into bike trails nearby our house. So we went this morning by bike to get a thistle of the former track bed for an image.
Blooming thistle at the former railroad tracks © Julian Köpke As there is so much structure in these images, I felt tempted to convert my artichoke and thistle images into monochrome. To some extent they resemble images of Karl Blossfeldt.
Blooming artichoke © Julian Köpke 
Blooming thistle at the former railroad tracks © Julian Köpke -
Play of colors and light
In our garden is a small fountain just beneath a hedge. A remarkable number of birds showed up to drink or to take a shower in it. The urge of the birds to bathe there was always stronger than the fear of our presence. What do they see in the fountain ? I couldn’t imagine an answer until today.
Great Titmouse (Kohlmeise) © Julian Köpke 
Crow in our garden © Julian Köpke Today I made macro images of the fountain with a wide variation of exposure values to find a small world within it. Many of my fountain images remind me of the night sky and its wonders. Sometimes I had to think of our universe.
The birds might see this ? I cannot be sure. But they are not blind, for sure.
A macro of our fountain appears like a painting under many exposure conditions. A first glance of four images is presented here.
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Astilbe
An Astilbe has an umbel-shaped inflorescence and therefore consists of countless small blooms. While blooming, its structure is extremely delicate and light. It looks as if spotted in the light that shines through everywhere. An Astilbe seems to be floating. What a delighting gift to get such a plant from my preferred flower dealer.
Blooming Astilbe in a vase © Julian Köpke 
Blooming Astilbe © Julian Köpke I had planned to reproduce this impression photographically. The three-dimensional impression of the human eyes is a complete different reality than a two-dimensional photograph. My photographs didn’t seem as delicate and fragile as the original.
The richness of the flower structure better unfolds in image crops. The resolution of my PhaseOne is high enough to have sufficient quality available in a cropped image.
Blooming Astilbe © Julian Köpke 
Blooming Astilbe © Julian Köpke
