Cree and I spend a big part of our day looking for new flowers in our yard to photograph. Lately I have been working with a red tulip, which looks great right now. After exhausting techniques like focus stacking, double exposure, zoomies…I went back to an old technique. Is there a way to get lots of depth of field without stacking, and create a complimentary border, all at the same time? Yes.
First, complimentary colors. Color theory states that colors on the opposite side of the color wheel cancel each other out. But when placed side by side, vibrant contrast is created and the image really stands out. The patterns include red/green, yellow/purple and blue/orange. My red tulip was surrounded by green leaves, so I already had a complimentary color pattern. To increase my depth of field, I photographed the flower from about two feet away at F11, and then cropped down the final shot. By shooting further away at F11 I captured good detail in the flower, but also increased detail in the green leaves, which I didn’t want.
To solve this problem, I went back to the sparkle paper I used as a background for an earlier macro, and cut a small hole in it. I then photographed through this hole using my 105mm F2.8. The image at the top is final shot. Certainly there are ways to do this in Photoshop, but sometimes going old school in the field just feels good.