"Pay attention to the world." -- Susan Sontag
 

Tag: irises

Black Iris Variations and Observations

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From Classic Irises and the Men and Women Who Created Them by Clarence E. Mahan:

“Amos Perry gave the name ‘Black Prince’ to the first iris he put into commerce because of the color of the flowers. ‘Black Prince’ has flowers with intense blue-violet standards and deep purple, almost black, falls, which have the texture of velvet. The color pattern of ‘Black Prince’ is called ‘neglecta.’ Other irises of this type were available when ‘Black Prince’ was introduced in 1900, but none with falls so dark and of such rich texture.

“The name ‘Black Prince’ was appropriate because of the color of the iris, but the name was also a stroke of advertising genius. What English heart could resist a ‘black iris’ named for the legendary warrior prince? The Royal Horticultural Society gave late-flowering ‘Black Prince’ an Award of Merit the year it was introduced. ‘Black Prince’ soon acquired a reputation for being a ‘slow grower,’ but its alleged lack of vigor did not diminish the desire of English and American gardeners to acquire it.

“Some unscrupulous nurserymen — not Perry — sometimes sold other irises, especially ‘Kochii,’ under the name of ‘Black Prince.’ So common did this practice become that gardeners had reason to believe that the iris’s name evoked another ‘black prince’ mentioned by Shakespeare in All’s Well That Ends Well, namely, ‘the black prince, sir, alias, the prince of darkness; alias, the devil.’

“Some iris experts believe that ‘Black Prince’ is one of the parents of Arthur Bliss’s famous iris progenitor ‘Dominion.’ Perry also thought this to be true. But Bliss did not really know the parentage of ‘Dominion’ and the truth of the matter remains, in the language of Scottish legal verdicts, ‘not proven.'”

Hello!

The first twelve photos in the galleries below are of some irises from Oakland Cemetery’s gardens that I’ve photographed and written about before — see Black Iris Variations (and Hallucinations) — and the remaining images are of a similar iris I’d not seen previously, but appears to be a related variant. All of them show similar and quite striking black color in their unopened buds and the standards and falls of opened flowers, and they all stand tall on stems ranging from two to four feet high, populated with clusters of blooms.

I was never quite satisfied with the colors I reproduced in that previous post, so with this trip to the gardens I tried to more accurately photograph and represent them as I saw them. Here, for example, is the original version of one of the photos as the camera interpreted it…

… which closely matches how I saw and remembered them. Worth noting here is that it was an overcast but fairly bright day, conditions which provide (in my opinion) the best lighting for flower photography. In this case especially, the diffused sunlight ensured that there were no harsh shadows between parts of the plant. That also had a countervailing effect, however: the flower and its colors appear somewhat neutral and the tonal range of the image seems limited, giving it a flat (could I say lifeless?) appearance, something that is often common with RAW images before any post-processing.

To my eyes (and in my brain), this initial version of the photo shows why this flower is commonly and locally referred to as a “black iris” — even if, botanically speaking, it’s not officially a black iris, of which there are very few since most are dark-dark purple rather than black. And in post-processing, that’s exactly how Lightroom sees it: colors my eyes interpreted as black actually contain various shades of dark purple (and dark blue). Here’s what happens when the only change I make in Lightroom is to increase the photo’s overall brightness…

… and Lightroom exposes the purple (and blue) that the camera actually captured. If I keep increasing brightness, the flowers get even purplier (!!) — making The Photographer wonder what colors are correct, and suggesting that variations between how we perceive color and how a camera can interpret it may be wildly different.

But that takes us back to what I — and not the camera — experienced: irises whose colors appeared mostly as black, especially so on this overcast day. So this becomes the challenge: how to represent the flower as a black iris, yet still create an image that has some interesting color variations, without over-purpling (!!) it. Here’s where I ended out, after experimenting with varying the hue, saturation, and luminance of purple and blue colors, while coming up with a combination of brightness and contrast that preserved the swaths of black. Now you see the colors as I experienced them, especially how each flower petal shifts from shades of purple at the outer edges (and at the stem) towards black at each petal’s center and on their undersides. And by adding a touch of extra detail in Lightroom to each of the blossoms, even the “velvet texture” described in the quotation at the top of this post comes through.

All of the photos in this series got similar treatment, though for each one I made different adjustments to the color variables, since even the slightest changes in cloud cover, background color, or reflected light (as from nearby statues) created variations in purple and blue intensity when the photos were taken.

Overall, this was a fun experiment with color, one that started on a fine spring day when freshly blooming irises were plentiful at Oakland Cemetery’s gardens. The number of blooms and color variations were surprising (even to me!) and I’m currently working through a backlog of iris photos in shades of brown, orange, peach, white, yellow, more blue and purple, and some with distinct color variations between their standards and falls — like white and purple or yellow and burgundy. The color wheel will be well-represented in all these photos as I post them — along with more history of this regal plant.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (3 of 3)

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From Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature by Alva Noe:

“Things show up for us as colorful and noisy. But this is all false appearance, a consequence of our particular makeup and local perspective. The qualities of objects we seem to see wouldn’t get cataloged in the final description of absolute reality. For they are merely effects, in our minds, of processes that are, in themselves, without color and without sound…. Everything we know in the world around us — from mountains to ice creams to sunsets to rose petals to the sun and the earth — is made up of physical parts that are made up in their turn of parts that are made up of still smaller parts. It’s pure matter… all the way down.”

From “The Act of Expression” in Art as Experience by John Dewey:

“[When] excitement about subject matter goes deep, it stirs up a store of attitudes and meanings derived from prior experience. As they are aroused into activity they become conscious thoughts and emotions, emotionalized images. To be set on fire by a thought or scene is to be inspired. What is kindled must either burn itself out, turning to ashes, or must press itself out in material that changes the latter… into a refined product….

[Elements] that issue from prior experience are stirred into action in fresh desires, impulsions and images. These proceed from the subconscious, not cold or in shapes that are identified with particulars of the past, not in chunks and lumps, but fused in the fire of internal commotion…. Through the interaction of the fuel with material already afire the refined and formed product comes into existence….”

Hello!

This is the third of three posts — with images magically remanufactured as black-background variations — of Iris domestica photographs that I uploaded to Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3) and Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (2 of 3). Also, for extra fun, I made a collage of all twenty images and included that at the bottom of this post.

Of all of the photos I’ve converted to black backgrounds, these are the most complicated. As is implied by the quotation from Strange Tools above, Iris domestica is a fine example of something that seems to reveal smaller and smaller parts and pieces, the more you look at it. Here, for example, is one of the photos from my previous posts…

… where you would see the two flowers in the center as the subject of the photo, despite the presence of many other elements. This is correct of course, and I guided your eyes toward seeing the photo that way by Lightroom adjustments that created greater visual distinction between the subject and background, by dimming and softening the background so the pair of orange-and-spotted flowers became more prominent.

Converting a photo like this to one with a black background can be a challenge. Last year I did something similar — see Leopard Flower Variations (On Black) from September, 2022 — where I used Lightroom brushes to paint the backgrounds black, limiting myself mostly to the flower blossoms because brushing around the plants’ thin stems, leaves, and seedpods was too time-consuming. Shortly after that, Adobe introduced enhanced masking tools with the ability to select objects, subjects, and backgrounds, which I’ve been using as much as possible since they became available.

Updates to our post-processing tools serve us best when they open up new possibilities; and with these Lightroom masking enhancements, I’ve tried to take on more complicated variations. Instead of just brushing out the backgrounds around parts of an image as I did in the past, I can now use a combination of masks to get better results. With object selection, I can choose different parts of an image that I want to retain as the black-background version’s overall subject, then invert all those selections, then change the background to black.

Here, for example, is an interim step in this approach. I selected parts of the image as individual objects in a single mask one at a time — the flower petals, the seedpods, and the stems — then inverted the mask (shown in dark green). Lightroom’s object selection got a lot right; but as you can see — look to the right of the flower — some of the stems appear disconnected from the rest. This happens when selected objects are close in color to the background colors, and will also happen where there are similarities in sharpness or contrast between foreground and background.

If I stopped here and converted the background to black, the gaps in the stems would be apparent, as you can see here…

… or, up closer, here:

I often compare the next steps (in my own head, at least) to painting different colors on walls and window trim, where you have to pay attention to the boundaries between two objects (the wall and the window frame) and two colors. If you slip with the paintbrush and one color intrudes onto the other, corrective action (!!) is warranted, along with, perhaps, a bit of cussing and extra bits of patience. But you have to fix it because you know it won’t look right if you don’t.

When adjusting masks that have started out coarse as shown above, I’ve learned that I need to remember that elements of any image tend to be brighter where they’re closer to the camera (or to the eye), and darker toward the back. This light-to-dark, front-to-back brightness variation is one of the ways that we perceive two-dimensional images as having depth, and it applies to even the smallest details. In Lightroom, the masks appear to become “fuzzier” when they partially cover darker, toward-the-back elements. If I adjust the masks too much, I lose the front-to-back appearance of depth and leave the image looking flat — and something as small and thin as a flower’s stem would look like a two-dimensional geometric line, instead of a living portion of a plant. At the same time, I have to deal with an illusion: the more I zoom into a photo, the more tiny pixels appear to need adjustments. It took some practice to keep in mind that front/light-to-back/dark contrast helps us perceive something as “real” and avoid adjusting the masks more than I should.

Since I have to pay close attention while working on the masks, I’ve noticed how familiar I become with the subjects of the photos and all their details. For most of my photos, this means that — even if it’s unintentional — I’m constantly observing the structures of plants and their flowers. This in turn helps me shoot with different expectations about what I see, what I can show, and what level of focus or what kind of light I need, especially if the photos might end out with black backgrounds. This is another valuable characteristic of the software tools we use: they not only offer expanded possibilities, but they help us see something we might overlook, as we envision different ways of taking photographs and enhancing them.

Here you see the corrected mask — where the stems (just to the right of the flower) are no longer disconnected from the rest of the plant. I used a “subtract brush” to erase the black background from areas where it intruded on the plant’s stems.

Now I can turn the mask overlay off, and I’ve got a completed black background. Select the first image below if you’d like to see a larger version, and I’ve included the original starting point for this image for comparison.

Thanks for reading and taking a look!

Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (2 of 3)

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From “Belamcanda” in Garden Bulbs in Color by J. Horace McFarland:

“More familiarly known as the Blackberry Lily or Leopard Lily, Belamcanda chinensis, a summer-blooming member of the iris family, is well worth growing. It came to us from China and Japan.

“With foliage much like iris and clusters of bright orange flowers on two-and-one-half-foot stems, the plant is very striking in the summer landscape. Plant the root-stalks in masses of six or more in places where they will have an effective background. Fortunately, the Blackberry Lily is relatively hardy, save in exposed areas.

“The first common name mentioned comes from the character of the seeds, which resemble blackberries. The other name, Leopard Lily (sometimes listed as Pardanthus chinensis), brings to mind the curious spots which accentuate the flowers.”

Hello!

This is the second of three posts featuring photos of the Blackberry Lily, Leopard Lily, Leopard Flower, or IRIS DOMESTICA! — that I took a few weeks ago. The first post is Iris Domestica, the Leopard Flower or Blackberry Lily (1 of 3).

I photographed these the day after several seriously-windy thunderstorms had passed through the area, and some of the plants had blown from their normal standing-tall positions to hang from their bent (but not broken)stems, almost horizontally among their leaves. The first seven photos below show the bit of extra drama I got from the plants in those positions.

Thanks for taking a look!