Hello! Below are a few photos of black irises I found near the entrance to Oakland Cemetery while on my recent photo-trips. As you can see from the photos, even though it’s a called a “black iris” there are threads of purple, magenta, and dark blue running through all the petals. In brighter spots — as shown in the first two photos — yellow sunlight emphasizes the intensity of the purple and magenta shades; whereas those more shielded from the sun — where the light shifts to cooler colors — show blue highlights instead.
Select the first image to see a larger version; and try “View full size” if you would like to get a closer look at the color and detail.
Come on let us see all the real flowers of this sorrowful world.
After the dream how real this iris!
I’ve made enough progress with post-processing iris photos I took at Oakland Cemetery in April that I decided I would start posting some of them. Well, in this case, one of them. This beauty produced a huge blossom, about six inches across at its widest points; and if you stare at it long enough, you may feel like it’s in motion, the petals waving at you in a spring breeze. The colors — blends of dominant purple shaded with blue — are the most common iris colors, and this flower’s large size shows them off well.
Select the image to see a larger version; and try “View full size” if you would like to get a closer look at the color and detail.
Because many of the iris blooms were so large, I used narrow apertures (f/14 or higher) to get as much of the bloom (from front to back) in focus as possible. Doing so brings in a lot more background elements at the same time, of course, so as I’ve been working through the photos, I’ve made decisions about whether to keep the background as shot (which works well for an isolated bloom or a bloom and its leaves), blur it (which you will see in some future posts), or remove it entirely. The iris shapes and colors fare really well against total black, so I picked out about half of the 120 photos for background removal — despite how long it takes to “unmask” the twists and turns of the flower petals and get the final result right.
Below are side-by-side variations showing the original image of the iris, followed by the black-background version. I used Lightroom’s spot removal tool to repair some defects in the petals, though happily didn’t have to spend too much time deleting offending pollen bloblets from the flower. I also made exposure and color adjustments in Lightroom — and applied some contrast and detail filters in the Nik Collection — to lighten excess blue shades (partly a darkening or saturating effect from using narrower apertures) and add a bit of additional texture. To remove the background, I dragged a Graduated Filter across the entire image; set Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, and Blacks as shown below; then used the Erase brush to reveal the bloom while leaving the background black.
Select the first image if you would like to compare the before and after renderings.
One down, 120 to go! Thanks for reading and taking a look! 🙂
“It’s true that you can go out sometimes just to ‘get some air’; some relief from the weighty immobility of objects and walls. Because you feel stifled indoors, you take a breather while the sun is shining out there; it just seems unfair to deny yourself the exposure to light. Then, yes, you go out and take a step round the block, simply to be outside rather than to go here or there. To feel the lively freshness of a spring breeze….
“One who goes out with a light heart, and a wish to put aside for a moment his labours and his fate. Only thus — with no expectation of a specific profit from the outing, and with all cares and worries firmly left behind — will a stroll become that gratuitous aesthetic moment, that rediscovery of the lightness of being, the sweetness of a soul freely reconciled to itself and to the world.”
Hello!
Here are a few more photos in my spring 2020 series. The first gallery shows an early bloom on a recently planted magnolia tree; and the photos in the third gallery and the final black-background image are azaleas. Those in the middle gallery — with orange paintbrush-like leaves — haven’t been so easy to identify; but I think you’re seeing there early growth on a Buckeye Bush. I’ll likely head back over to Oakland Cemetery’s gardens next week to see if I can find these plants again, and get a picture with more pieces to it to help with identification.
