About the Image(s)

Nigella – also known as ‘Love in the Mist’

The flower image was shot on my Fuji XT4 with 18-55mm lens at 46mm, 1/8th Second, f11 and ISO200, in my collapsible ‘studio’ unit consisting of 3 sides and base of a large computer printer box painted white. The ‘studio’ was positioned by a window to use daylight, and the camera set on a tripod, the flower was supported by a long needle inserted up the stem held in a clip.

The white balance was adjusted in Lightroom, then in Photoshop the image cropped to a square and the flower selected by using the magic wand to create a mask to remove all the white background and this was then refined as required. A small area of the petals was selected and put on a new layer, then using Transform this was enlarged to fill the whole frame before being positioned behind the flower layer and its saturation adjusted. The flower layer was sharpened using High Pass. The stroke colours around the edge were created by sampling parts of a petal and the stem.