Unique floral photography

written for the stereosite by Jane Sabini, USA

Flo­ral pho­tog­ra­phy is a good entry point for begin­ning stere­o­g­ra­phers due to the ease of deter­min­ing an appro­pri­ate base­line. I still strug­gle with hyper-stereo pairs even though I have been explor­ing stereo-pho­tog­ra­phy for near­ly five years! So flo­ral pho­tog­ra­phy with back­grounds removed now rep­re­sents my sig­na­ture style. I was moti­vat­ed to exper­i­ment with back­ground removal to elim­i­nate dis­tant pho­to con­tent inter­fer­ing with effi­cient stereo free-view­ing and, in doing so, became enchant­ed with how this approach show­cas­es the intri­cate beau­ty of even the sim­plest of flowers.

In the ear­ly days of my stereo jour­ney, I used Pho­to­shop exclu­sive­ly to cre­ate and edit stereo pairs with a tem­plate gra­cious­ly shared by Dr. May. I have since dis­cov­ered mobile pho­to-edit­ing apps which are near­ly as robust as Pho­to­shop and more user-friend­ly. To cre­ate and align stereo pairs shot sequen­tial­ly, I use the col­lage fea­ture of the Pixlr mobile app with the side-by-side frame lay­out, and align con­tent man­u­al­ly by eye. This allows me flex­i­bil­i­ty with crop­ping, com­po­si­tion and com­pen­sa­tion for size errors between sequen­tial pairs.

Once I have per­fect­ed a stereo pair, I import the result­ing image into a sec­ond mobile app called Enlight Photo­fox, which has more advanced edit­ing tools, includ­ing a back­ground “eras­er”. For back­ground removal, I work on an iPad using a sty­lus. This can be very detailed and intri­cate work, depend­ing on the lev­el of con­trast between the sub­ject flower and the back­ground being elim­i­nat­ed, but I find the results to be sat­is­fy­ing and the process to be almost ther­a­peu­tic! The only time I use stereo-pho­to apps such as i3DSteroid is when I am teach­ing stereo-pho­tog­ra­phy to begin­ners. For my own art, I pre­fer stan­dard pho­to-edit­ing tools.

You will note that I often incor­po­rate typog­ra­phy fea­tures in my work, care­ful­ly plac­ing text at the stereo win­dow to enhance dimen­sion­al­i­ty. One of the ben­e­fits of back­ground removal is the abil­i­ty to manip­u­late con­tent in “z‑Space” with­out the inher­ent stereo win­dow violations!

If you want to see more flow­ers in my style, you can vis­it the cor­re­spond­ing post “Just flow­ers” in the Gallery. Enjoy!