Originally posted by LaRee I really like the effect you created with this image. Care to share how you achieved it?
Sure! I'm not a proprietary kind of guy.
For the photo, I used a black backdrop and two light sources. The first was just a soft spot located about 5 feet to the left and a foot behing the flowers for backlighting. When I say "spot", I mean one of those $2 aluminum shop lights from Home Depot with a soft white bulb in it.
The second was a studio strobe/umbrella set to a relatively low output. It was located about 5 feet to the right and slightly in front and above the flowers to bring out the highlights.
For PP, I used Photoshop. I used an old trick taught to me by a photog friend to emulate a diffusion filter. First, select the entire image (ctrl-A), copy it to the clipboard (ctrl-C) and then create a new layer via copy. Then select the new layer, use Filter/blur and add a guasian blur to the new layer. Add enough blur to make the image almost unrecognizeable (alot). Then with the layer still selected, roll back the opacity slider to about 30% or so (to your taste).
That's it!