Dried Flowers and Seed Heads
Here's a rather simple sample of one of my dried flower arrangements. I didn't have much to work with but it's not too bad. It contains crocosmia, poppy, teasel, iris and a couple kinds of grasses seed heads, plus small dried cedar branches, goldenrod and small sunflower flowers, and dried crocosmia leaf spears. Oh, yes, there are white wooden tulips also. This arrangement is about 3 years old and looks better face to face, or should I say, face to flower. :-)
08-04-06 addendum: I just remembered, the dark red-brown smooth leaves in the arrangement are salal. They are dark green and glossy when fresh and dry to a very nice color and keep their shine.
Have fun experimenting with dried seed heads and flowers and weeds.
Dried flower arrangement in low resolution (#1 in PS).
Dried flower arrangement in high resolution (#12 in PS).
Notes: Click image for larger view
Taken with Nikon CP7600 August 3, 2006
posted by Puget4 | 9:53 PM
15 Comments:
Hi Puget. That's a beautiful arrangement. I remember years ago when we had cat tails in a dried flower arrangement. One day we come home and a cat tail exploded. I'm talking stuff all over the living room. Took forever to get it cleaned up. :-)
LOL, FM. I can just imagine. I had a white German Shepherd once who was a house dog in an apartment. He lived for when I came home from work. Once day, I came in, said hello and left to go next door for about 15 minutes. When I got back, he had totally destroyed two shredded foam bed pillows that I kept on the sofa. There was shredded foam everywhere. Do you know you can't sweep shredded foam? Must be much like cattail down.
Thanks P4!
I agree w/ FM (hehe of course) that it is beautiful. :) The 'textures' are amazing.
And thanks for posting the two versions ... they look the same to me on my monitor. Very interesting!
Hi Puget and Olivia.
On the low and high resolutions I can tell the difference. On the low I can see the pixels. On the high, the pixels are gone and you can see texture of the wall or divider behind it.
Wonderful difference Puget.
Good eye, FM. Another place to look is at the teasel. On the low res it just looks a little "soft" around the seed head. On hi res you can see the individual spines.
Bottom line, lo res is okay for viewing on a monitor. Hi res is essential for printing.
Olivia, I've been looking into the PS watermark thing and I think there may be something good there as well.
FM did you used to be a graphics person before becoming a slacker?
Puget I wish I had worked in graphics. I've only worked with them while doing family pictures.
I haven't worked with the photo programs in awhile because unfortunately I'm one of those people who will get interested in something and keep at it until I feel I 've got it down and then I'll loose interest.
Now I have one comment about the low and high resolution as far as viewing. I don't know if I have my screen set on a very high resolution, but I could see the pixels on the low. That's without even clicking to enlarge. I'm not sure if the lowest resolution is the way to go. It seems it will distort the beauty you're trying to show. I'm sure somewhere between #1 and #12 is the setting that's right. Also the difference between Jpeg and other formats matter a lot. Just depends on how large you want your file.
Then again, I might be talking out my ear and not know what the heck I'm talking about. :-)
Okay you two ... if you compare the two (which you wouldn't be able to do normally :P) you can see slight differences, like the edges are not as sharp in the top one. I was being general, but you two are specific ...
Okay ... maybe it's worth saving a number of pix along that range and comparing them ... My next task!
Thanks you guys for doing this ... I'm learning a lot!
I think FM is right. The low res hides some of the beauty that an exquisite hi res can show....you know, that "gasp" reaction we all want. What to do, what to do.
I have some comments about the cause of our concerns (people stealing photos) but they don't belong in polite conversation among visual folks. It would be so nice to just share and not worry.
Oh yes, FM, you're not talking out of your ear. (Now that brings to mind quite an image.) You talk like someone who has taught himself a lot about graphics (since you deny "working" in them). I guess I got to liking jpegs instead of gifs because of the resolution they afford. Tiffs are way too huge for any good use. But it often requires gifs to make a transparent image to paste onto another image.
Now here I go showing my age in graphics. No doubt there are ways of creating a transparency without using gifs now. This technology changes so fast now.
Hi again Puget. I never did use gifs that much because I only got back on the net back in Dec. I'm seeing they're used a good bit in html.
It's funny with JPEG vs TIFF. All the pictures I save onto disks are in TIFF. I might be wrong, but it seemed to me that my pictures degraded a little bit over time saving in JPEG. Most of the stuff I have on my computer now are in JPEG because I only have an 80 gig hard drive. I figured as long as it's on disks I'd rather have every pixel tagged vs having like colors blended together. Usually I can't tell the difference, but I figure I'll have the original picture with ever bit of info it came with. Then if I want to do something or save it in a different format from there, I can.
Like I said, no graphics background, but when I get interested in something, I'm one of those all or nothing type people. :-)
Hi there P4! This is my first visit over to your place, since I finally figured out this was your site!
Great post on dried arrangements. We try to dry a fair amount of our flowers as well, and it looks like this year we'll have a bumper crop of Bells of Ireland to use if they don't disintegrate before we can cut them. They've already started drying on the plants as new ones are coming after them. They're ver delicate to use and often don't last through the winter, but sure look nice! Good suggestion on the coneflowers as well... we let ours go for critter food, but have used them as well.
Our favorite by far is Celosia (the cristata species or large "cockscomb") which will last several years and keep its color quite well, especially if you spray it with a clear fixative spray after it dries. AND, on that subject re: your comment on my blog the other day. I'm currently putting together my materials for another post on celosia sports which will be up soon. One in particular is giving me fits getting a good pic of it, because every time I go out to take pics the wind suddenly seems to whip up out of nowhere! I do have an example already up that I posted the other night, so go take a look.
Liked your suggestion that we collect the seeds... we usually just let them go so we are assured of new ones the following year, but it might be worth the effort to collect some ... however, given their propensity to sport, what we think we will be getting may be a whole nother critter next year! One reason we just let them do their own thing and wait for the surprise the next year.
Well a big fat DUH to me! Your comment to me was at Olivia's place, not mine! Sorry about that. O has me linked on her page (as does FM) so I'd be honored if you took a look sometime and see if you like what's going on there.
Hi IVG. Thanks for coming around! Glad you like my dried flowers. As I said, it's not much but it's not too bad. I used to do a lot with dried things and with cut flowers too but I've been without a garden for six years.
BTW, what is the name of your blog? I want to visit.
Puget here's IVG's blog site.
It's a great place and so educational. :)
Don't know how I missed up, but the name of the site is Urban Oasis.
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