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Floral experiments
Changing colors in flowers are attractive, especially if you approach them closely. A group of 3 flowers looks like a communicative group. With targeted overexposure and instant images on the laptop, the compositional decision is easier and the colors become more picturesque, without too much processing with the computer.
Yellow and red gerbera © Julian Köpke A curtain over the illuminated background behind the focal plane creates an effect reminiscent of nebulae in the night sky.
Red and yellow gerbera © Julian Köpke Photography of flowers in a vase in an exposure series (HDR) is complicated by their light sensitivity, which causes a change of position in short time scales. Plants constantly rearrange their leaves and blossoms. This results in blurring, which can be compensated for e. g. by repeating the shot series, shorter exposure time series or tools for aligning the images. Or you can do your image without HDR, because the dynamic range of the camera data is sufficient.
Bouquet of red and yellow gerberas © Julian Köpke The center of a Gerbera blossom is richly structured. Due to the high resolution of the camera back (150 MP), it is possible to crop out the center still in good resolution.
Inner circle of a red and yellow gerbera © Julian Köpke The transparent representation of the petals is achieved by using a light box. The light should be relatively bright, but does not have to be fully homogeneous. The heat of the light does not matter, it is adjusted using RAW format in post-processing. More informations about this method see web-pages of Harold Davis, who invented this method.
Yellow gerbera © Julian Köpke 
Yellow gerbera on a lightbox © Julian Köpke -
Color phantasy
For the first composition today I started with cornflowers on a lightbox. I always have liked cornflowers with their typical cornflower blue. With this composition I wanted to show different stages of cornflower development in one image.
Cornflowers © Julian Köpke I also liked very much the yellow of a craspedia globosa that Christa bought this morning. To bring out the colors I decided to install them in my „darkroom studio„. I made the image as a frame average of some 15 exposures, 3s each at f/16 and ISO 800.
Craspedia globosa © Julian Köpke I developed a combination of colours that the garden offered me with the craspedia globosa to create this picture, in which red, blue, yellow and green play a leading role.
Craspedia, cornflower and heucheria © 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
