Rosa on Raising Children

Juzno: A penny for your thought?

Rosa: It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

Juzno: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?

Rosa:  No, my tax preparer.

Hope your day is going well.

Featured Comments:

Glenn:  I suppose tax preparers have lots to say about wasted time.

Anne:  Very nice.  I love roses.  Perfect lighting.  How do you make the background dark?

May I keep this one for a card later if I need to make one for emergency?

Juzno:  Thanks.  You can use this for your card, Anne.

There are a number of ways to make the background dark.  I used to just shoot as-is, and burn and dodge in post processing.  But usually the result is artificial.  The best way is to do it on-camera.

The trick is to be able to find the right background so the red on the rose would pop out.  I just keep looking on the view finder until the lighting on the background looks good.  I shot this on manual exposure: f4 at 1/200.  On auto, my camera wants to shoot at f4, 1/80 but I decided to underexpose it so I can get the background dark.  In Photoshop, I selected the red channel and pushed the red back up in the Curves Overlay.  This way only the reds are affected.  It’s really easier to show it than it sounds.