Morning Fern

by Andrew Court
(Johannesburg South Africa)

I love it when the sun back lights subjects, especially plants and flowers.

I took this shot of a back lit fern when the morning dew was at its best and the original colour shot was really pretty showing vivid contrasting colour- but when I converted it to black and white I prefferred the contrasts and the overall look.

I took the pic into photoshop and used the channel mixer and converted to monochrome. However plain desaturation was quite flat so I used the preset green filter which gave me more appealing blacks and whites.

I then fiddled with the contrast until I got what I thought was good. I added some more lens flare to some of the droplets. I have also sent the original colour shot.

Hope you like and look forward to the critique.

Andrew.


Personally, I love the photo! I think converting it to black and white was a really good move.

Images that contain regular shapes (such as these ferns) look really good in black and white.

The thing I think I like the most is the shooting angle - great idea to get under the leaf as the sun causes tiny starbursts where the water droplets are.

And of course the composition - spot on! Cropping the scene to really concentrate on just one frond set against a clean background is excellent.

Often photographers are tempted to get too much into a scene - less really is so often more!

Great photo Andrew, and thanks for the submission,

Darrell.

Click here to post comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to black and white digital photography - site submissions.