Flower Power
Another destination last weekend was the Exotic Plant Festival at Tropiflora Nursery. It's not a long trip, since it's about half a mile from the condo, but it's like stepping into another world, where pineapples bloom in purple, and aloe is red instead of green. The shot above is the blossom on one of the thousands of bromeliads they had on display. They had specimens in just about every color of the rainbow, save blue. Well, I suppose there's a little blue in this flower spike, so they had all the colors covered.
The flower above is a Faux Bombax. The closed flower does look a little like a real bombax, but the flowers are worlds apart. Just trust me on this. I'll show you a bombax flower some other time.
It's sort of like an aloe plant, but it's red. If real aloe heals burns, I'd be nervous about slicing this one open and spreading the goo inside on my skin...
I should have bought this little cactus, with it's delicate spirals of blosooms. But I was afraid that it was one of those plants that dies after it blossoms. Maybe next year... If you look close at the picture, you can see little bits of potting soil stuck in the spines. That may give you a sense of scale in this photo.
How did you get the black background like you did for the faux bombax? Is that just good old composition and lighting or editing or what? So many times, even with good focal range, my plant, lizard, and flower pics are taken away from by the busy backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteGetting a black background is easy. All you have to do is shoot at night. Seriously, it's all composition. In that picture, the flower is in full sunlight, and I was shooting towards a dark area under a tent. The difference in the amount of light between the two areas rendered the background black. In the original picture, there were lit areas visible, but some judicious cropping fixed that. I believe I was holding the camera above my head to get the shot I wanted, but I think the results warranted the odd pose.
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