Later that afternoon, I noticed the sunlight light coming in through the window where I display some antique bottles I’ve collected. It was really lighting up the amber colored Purex bottle and I really liked the grungy texture caused by the residue inside.  Ah ha!  Great background for that leaf skeleton!  But how should I shoot it…in mutiple shots to use as layers for a composite or a single shot?  I wanted to try it as a single shot if I could figure out how to adhere the leaf skeleton to the glass.  I remembered when I was a kid I had a microscope and I would use a drop of water to sandwich the slides and a specimen in place.  I dabbed some water on the side of the bottle, and then pressed the leaf skeleton in place. But the three leaves were connected, and it wouldn’t lay flat until I cut one section and placed it separately.  Once it was arranged and in place, I used a paper towel to dry the drips, then got my camera.

 I used my Samsung NX1 crop sensor camera with a 60 mm macro lens hand held. My settings were ISO 200,  f/9.0, 1/200 sec.  I took a few shots trying to get one with the least amount of reflections and selected this one to work with.  I had to put on a dark fleece jacket to cut back on my own reflection on the glass (I was wearing a light colored shirt.) The image was edited using Lightroom.  It looked pretty good SOOC, but I decided to make some minor edits. I tried several crops, and decided on the vertical because of the vertical streaks.

I made slight adjustments in color temperature, texture, clarity, and contrast. I used a brush tool to adjust the color in the reflection streaks that appeared white. Next, I made some small hue adjustments in the reds, yellows and oranges, some minor adjustments in luminance, highlights and exposure, until I was happy with the overall look. If I were doing it again today, I think I would make fewer changes…probably just crop, increase the texture, and adjust the color on the reflections. I learn by doing, and by taking a fresh look, and doing things again, I gain new insights.