This shot was taken last Summer at around 8:30 in the evening. From my collection of Aeoniums I chose the most uniform and strongly coloured to do test shots with. I already had an idea in my mind of how I wanted the image to look so it was only a matter of setting up the shot and achieving a reasonable exposure. Close-up work normally requires a sturdy tripod to hold the camera still and to facilitate focusing. Essential to capture the fine detail. My tripod has an extendable arm that allows the camera to be positioned perpendicular to the subject.

Once I had a dozen or so images, I loaded them into Photoshop, chose my favourite and converted it to monochrome. Aeoniums have a light green centre with darker maroon coloured leaves towards the outside which lends itself to a black & white conversion very well. Some light dodging and burning was applied to bring out the detail and increase contrast. To lose the busy background and focus on the plant I cut it out from the main image and placed it on a black background. Finally, I cropped the picture to a square.

Exif – Sony A6000, Lens - Zeiss 16-70 set at 55mm, 0.5 sec, f16, iso 100