• Background,  flowers,  Heidelberg,  Macro

    Heidelberg Castle, flowers and flypaper textures

    Heidelberg Castle is a landmark. In winter its red color becomes softer. For one winter Frederick V. became king with his home in this castle. After that, Germany sank into the 30 Years War. The castle had been ruined already by fire a couple of years before.

    Winter Castle of the Winter King © Julian Köpke

    The delicacy and dreaminess of a photo is not always the result of intensive digital processing. The ranuncula of the following image hardly needed editing. You can feel it. With a tripod and a 85mm Lensbaby velvet at f/16 I shot this image with really delicate color.

    Ranuncula © Julian Köpke

    The lavish feast is over. Paradise is no more. The king went into exile. We’re staying.

    The roaring party is over © Julian Köpke
  • Background,  flowers,  Monochrome

    Heucheria leaves

    Backgrounds create a new image impression. Sometimes you need a background to add to the picture some more pizzazz. In these pictures I use the background to simulate a photographic base as I saw it in Karl Blossfeldt’s pictures.

    The starting point is always a color image. With a background named „Aged Board“ the color image already shows an attractiveness of its own.

    Heucheria leaf © Julian Köpke

    The Black & White conversion enhances the contrast a bit which is why I’m adding a little glow.

    Heucheria leaf © Julian Köpke

    From another Heucheria leaf, which shone in a wonderful red, I show here only the black and white conversion with background. This makes the reproduction of its structure much better.

    Heucheria leaf © Julian Köpke
  • Background,  flowers,  Lightbox

    Heucheria leaf on a light box

    So often I tried to image a Heucheria leaf. It doesn’t seem complicated. With less saturation the impression of a water color image emerges of a single leaf.

    Heucheria leaf © Julian Köpke

    Going on with my Blossfeldt studies I need a background for this image. An image with background exerts a special charm. A paper structure fits well.

    Heucheria leaf © Julian Köpke

    Only the conversion to black and white comes closer to the impression of a Blossfeldt macro.

    Heucheria leaf © Julian Köpke
  • Background,  flowers,  General

    Do you like Karl Blossfeldt ?

    Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer who lived from 1865 to 1932. He didn’t think himself a photographer. With his studies of plant forms he made an enormous contribution to plant photography. Here is a nice wikipedia article about him.

    He started to do photograms. Plants or parts of plants were placed directly on film or paper suitable for exposure. Exposure then takes place without any optics. Later he built himself a wooden camera, which reminds me of Andreas Feininger.

    Black and white backlit macro images with a background can be similar to Blossfeldt’s images.

    Silver leaf © Julian Köpke
    Heucheria in bloom © Julian Köpke
    Vetch © Julian Köpke
    Day lily © Julian Köpke