Comments on: background check

By: lostlandscape

lostlandscape — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 04:33:27 +0000

George, ah Hollywood. I’m not surprised. People do a lot of things to make a striking photo, from waiting out the light until it’s perfect to totally fabricating what’s in front of the lens—people like James Casebere and Lori Nix.

By: George

George — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:08:56 +0000

One final note on backgrounds:

According to the IMDB entry for the HBO series Six Feet Under (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248654/trivia), “the lone tree in the opening sequence does not actually stand on the hill shown. It was dug up from someone’s back yard, and placed there for the purposes of capturing the shot.”

Here’s someone’s screengrab of that shot:

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q110/Lunatik17/six-feet-under.jpg

A rather extreme act, I would say!

By: lostlandscape

lostlandscape — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:41:45 +0000

Cool work, George. The feral houses in the second really remind of the work of William Christenberry: http://www.steidlville.com/books/705-Working-from-Memory.html

By: George

George — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 21:33:43 +0000

Jim…

A shot by James Griffioen made me think of your background check:

http://www.jamesgriffioen.net/index.php?/photography/ruinslife/

Here’s another work of his you might like:

http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/07/feral-houses.html

By: [ Lost in the Landscape ] » july bloom day

[ Lost in the Landscape ] » july bloom day — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:38:21 +0000

[…] blooming in the garden. I’ve done a couple posts on using backgrounds behind plants (Background check / One way to photogrpah a tree). Inspired, all but one of these shots uses a white sheet of […]

By: lostlandscape

lostlandscape — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:39:59 +0000

Tina, are you thinking of armeria? You’re right, they have a similar way of floating the flowers over the plant.

Ryan, I’m impatient! I’ve seen these buckwheats get quite a bit bigger, and the scale of the plant against the background will help the situation out for sure. No red azaleas against your brick red wall, huh? I could see how they might get lost…

George, the house came with what must be 200 feet of various brick walls all over the yard. As much as I’m basically okay with brick—neither love nor hate—I actually have been tempted to stucco over some of it in the past.

Thanks, Greg. A macro does wonders to isolate the foreground from all the noise of the world, for sure. Pink against orange is one of those combinations the color police sometimes says is a no-no, but see people using really effectively—your kitchen walls for example.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:12:11 +0000

Vive la difference! I like the botanical drawing look of your image with the white background. Pretty pink flowers, too.

I bet they’d look good against the brick background with your macrofocus, the pink against the bricktones reminds me of my kitchen color scheme.

By: George Janczyn

George Janczyn — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 04:18:53 +0000

Maybe you should stucco your bricks white?

By: ryan

ryan — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 05:22:58 +0000

I like how you put the white board behind the plant. It really gives a different look. As a garden installer, I end up being really conscious of backgrounds. Some clients just changed their mind about the color of a wall, in the middle of a job, changing it from olive gray to brick red, and I had to change to the planting to match. Now, I have three red azaleas I don’t know what to do with.
I think the buckwheat will look really good when it gets larger and you have the gray foliage against the brick and the pink blooms rising above it.

By: tina

tina — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:02:10 +0000

Backgrounds do make a pretty big difference. But I also think that when pink contrasts with the pink of the brick it can make a nice picture too. It may not pop as well but the white flowers on top of the brick wall help to lead the eye in that direction. Pretty flower. Looks almost like an ameria (sp)