About the Image(s)

I have some lovely barley type grasses in my garden and thought they might make a good subject for a still life. Once I had put a few stems in a vase I then thought I would try the Pep Ventosa technique with them. I took 9 separate images of the grasses, rotating the vase between each shot. After initial processing of the images, I returned to take a shot of a single upright stem of grass held in my Plamp. The images were taken in natural daylight, with an LED light to provide some extra illumination on the left and a white reflector on the right. The images ware taken with my Olympus OM-1 and 12-40mm lens on a tripod. Settings were f6.3, 1/13s, ISO 100, +0.3 stop. I made the following changes in Photoshop after initial processing in Camera Raw.

I loaded the 9 images of the grasses into a stack and aligned the vase. I then created a smart object of the stack and used the “Mean” stack mode. (Layer > Smart Object > Stack Mode > Mean). I added a single image of the grasses and placed this on top of the stack at 50% opacity. I also added the single stem of grass in lighten blend mode, so I just had the grass. I used 4 different textures in different blend modes (soft light or multiply) at between 25% and 50% opacity. I added a couple of Topaz effects and finally added a vignette using Nik Colour Efex ??“ Darken Lighten Centre. The final image reminded me of a fountain, hence the title.