Fuschia Gradient, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Down the block, in front of Heidi’s house, there’s a great fuschia that grows buds like this one (Jet Engine and Doodling show buds from the same plant last year). Fortunately, Heidi has given me permission to snip buds whenever I like, so I can have an affair with the flowers every year.

This bud was photographed on a light box using a macro lens and extension tube. In Photoshop, I converted the image to LAB color. Next, I inverted the image (to get the black background) and combined the inversion with the original using a layer mask and a gradient blend.

[Nikon D300, 100mm f/2.8 Zeiss macro lens, 36mm Kenko extension tube, 3 combined exposures from 1/2 a second to 2 seconds, all exposures at f/22 and ISO 100, tripod mounted (using a Kirk Mighty Low Boy).]