About the Image(s)

I got a pot of purple tulips on Palm Sunday. A week later the flower stalks had grown about 10”, several inches ??“ much taller than the leaves. Well, they started to droop. We tried staking the stems, but with little success. When we woke up Easter morning, the stems had arranged themselves in this beautiful fan. They needed a plain background to stand out in a photograph ??“ not easy to find in a kitchen.

Ah! The black TV screen! Do you know how reflective those black TV screens are? Well, I selected the subject and pasted it on its own layer. Then added a black layer underneath it. Reflections gone, but now the flowers are floating in a black void. I tried a gradient layer (black to white); eh. I tried a texture; more eh. So, I pasted another copy of the subject on top of everything, flipped it vertical, and created a reflection. Much better. On its own layer I added a thin grey line to suggest the intersection of the black wall and the black base. I added a thin green stroke to make it stand out against our black background.