Lovely Lavender

I have three different lavender shrubs in my garden, all in full flower, so I decided to do some more still life shots with them.

This time using my nifty fifty 50mm F1.8 lens, to try and get a slightly different perspective than provided by the macro, to get a bit more of the surface and background elements.  Trying to achieve a feeling of depth and a sense of place.

The paper with writing on it is my fabulous wallpaper sample, that has letters and post cards with great handwriting on it, perfect for laying down a nice base that is neutral but has some interest to it.

Then the flowers, this is picked from two of my purple shrubs, one is a lighter purple than the other.

In the background my grey crate with the cute old fashioned snips leaning against it.

Of course once I had an image I liked, it had to be edited in different ways, so there are three here with different presets, one fairly true to life (at the top), one hazy and matte (not my preferred style but its quite ‘in’) and one faded and muted colours – my personal favourite.

The images have also had some texture layers added in PS for some extra depth and interest.

Next I experimented with fabric, I have this lovely heavy rich white linen which has a nicely frayed edge, so the bunch was wrapped in the fabrick and laid down on it for a nice textured but neutral background.  The above image has a hazy matte preset applied.

Same image with a brighter  crisper preste added, to bring out the purples and the detail in the lavender heads.

I am learning a lot about patience and composition while doing these still life shoots.  Staging an image like this is much harder to do well than I realised.

Also interesting is the different feel or mood able to be achieved with images via the different presets. 

  There are several different styles of image here – which do you like and why? Which don’t work for you?

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