The World of
James Carroll

Literally "Against the day." but taken in photography to be "Against the light"

The finished project was displayed in a black circular window mat.

History

It was Autmn. The day was cold but bright. I went for a walk through the local park and discovered that the lower branches of the trees were at a convenient height to allow me to photograph the leaves against the light. At first sight this might not be apparent, but look carefully at the shadows, they are not on the leaf but projecting through from the back.

Since this was not a planned photographic outing I was using my pocket camera, an Olympus C770UZ. On reviewing the pictures on the PC I decided that some were quite good, so a return visit was planned for the following day with my 'proper' gear. How fickle our weather is! A storm blew all night and by the following day not a single leaf was to be seen! I would have to make do with the lower res. pics.

Method

I carefully selected the leaf using the Magnetic Lasso Tool. I created a new image and pasted the leaf in as a layer; dupliced the layer six times; then rotated and shifted the layers to form the petals of a flower.
I found an old image of a rose, and again carefully selected the part I wanted and pasted it to another layer.
Finally the background was filled with a circular gradient, coloured to suit the effect I was after. The print was mounted behind a circular cutout.