plant Archives - Rachel Cohen Photography

“Sand Flower”

June 8, 2013 by Rachel

In stark contrast to the two images in my last post, I thought I’d show you one of the flowers of pure beauty that lives and thrives in the sand at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lake Shore.

I have no idea what this plant or flower is called, so feel free to let me know. I found this botanical among thousands of others on a climb on the eastern facing side of the dunes.

This day was also extremely windy, especially in this location, so I decided to climb further up, then down, to try and get away from the strong gusts. I ended up going along some very narrow trails, over and under trees of varying sizes, and in the end I found that there was no way to escape the wind. I basically just had to cling onto a tree with all my strength to steady myself in order to get this image. I imagine these flowers only bloom for a short while every year. So I’m happy that I was there to see it at the right time!!

I hope you like it! I sure do, especially after what I went through to get it!! 😉

“Sunlit Fern”

April 5, 2013 by Rachel

Quite often as many of you also probably do. I process an image in more than one way. Sometimes it may be variations of clarity, vibrance, removal of noise, etc. Other times, as in the case of this image, it was a conversion from color, to monochrome, than back to color again. I started with a very sunlit fern with quite direct overhead lighting, which was pretty harsh.

When I decided to process it, after messing around in color, I felt it really worked better in monochrome. I played around with it using solarization, but decided against that. I processed using settings in Lightroom, Nik Color Efex Pro, and then Nik Silver Efex Pro with a final toning in selenium for the first image.

At first I was going to leave well enough alone and have just the monochrome version, but then I got a hankering to go back and re-process the original color one also. I again used a combination of Lightroom and Nik Color Efex Pro. What I came out with is a very vibrant and leafy green bit of fern fronds.

I like both versions equally as well, but in different ways. Which one do you like better? Which one gives you the feeling you’d like to see when thinking about ferns? Feel free to let me know your thoughts! 🙂

“Octopus” mono

March 17, 2013 by Rachel

Well, when you look at this image you’ll probably guess that this is not an actual octopus. I decided to have a little fun and do a some experimenting in processing an Aloe Vera image.

Ideally I should show you the original and then this processed one, but I’m saving that for another time.

I was at our local conservatory a couple of weeks ago, and spent most of my time in the arid, desert climate section. One of the plants I took several shots of was an Aloe Vera.

I first took the image from Lightroom into Nik Color Efex Pro, where I added some toning and brilliance. Then I applied the solarization setting in a monochrome, and pushed the timelapse slider way past 50%. I’m not quite sure of the exact number right now.

I then sent it back into Lightroom bumped up the clarity a bit, and sent it into Nik Silver Efex Pro, where I did some fine tuning and added a selenium tone to it.

I really like the way it turned out. I know its not for everyone, but for something a bit different, and a pretty big take on an abstract in nature, I think it works well, and it does resemble an octopus!! 🙂

I hope you enjoy the image!!

“Green Sleeves”

January 23, 2013 by Rachel

Well, when you look at this image you’ll probably think she meant to say “Green Leaves” instead of “Green Sleeves”, but nope as I was processing this image the first thing that popped into my head was an old English song, which many of you probably don’t even know; “Green Sleeves”, which if I were to be proper and spell the title correctly, it was “Greensleeves”.

If you know the lyrics, this image in no way resembles the words LOL, but Green is the operative word here, as you can see!

Here are the lyrics to the song Greensleeves if you haven’t heard of it before! 🙂

Alas my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously;
And I have loved you oh so long
Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

I have been ready at your hand
To grant whatever thou would’st crave;
I have waged both life and land
Your love and goodwill for to have.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.

Thy petticoat of sendle white
With gold embroidered gorgeously;
Thy petticoat of silk and white
And these I bought gladly.

Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves my heart of gold
Greensleeves was my heart of joy
And who but my lady Greensleeves.