How I Created a Floral Print From a Photograph

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I don’t usually take photos of flowers in my wanderings and I typically don’t gravitate towards floral print patterns, but here’s a short story about how both of them just sorta happened.

I was walking the Arnold Arboretum, just off the Arborway in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, a couple of years ago, and tried my hand at photographing something, anything, other than people. It turns out that sometimes flowers, such as rhododendrons, can be more difficult to photograph than people. At least people can occasionally take direction, while plants will do their own damned thing, especially on a surprisingly breezy day.

Imagine trying to ask a flower to lower its chin and then stick its forehead out a little..?

So, yeah anyway, I don’t typically use Photoshop. It’s a discipline I picked up when I was an local news photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette but I wanted to test my editing prowess by isolating the rhododendron itself, giving it a slight psychedelic twist, and then punching it out onto a plain white background because I thought it would make a unique all-over pattern for a variety different products, like a really sexy bikini, a comfortable sports bra, or even an adorable crop top.

rhododendron flower against gray sky — © 2019 Adrian Feliciano / adrianfeliciano.com / Original image, photographed against an overcast sky at the Arboretum in Boston, MA

rhododendron against white background — © 2019 Adrian Feliciano / adrianfeliciano.com / First thing to do was brighten the colors, improve contrast, and then isolate the flower onto a white background

psychedelic graphic of rhododendron against a white background — The image was given a psychedelic edit before converting it to a transparent PNG suitable for use as a repeating floral print pattern

woman standing in doorway wearing floral print skater skirt, sunglasses and holding purse — Sovička loves her psychedelic floral print skater skirt!

The heavy lifting was done with the free version of the Topaz Plugin Suite. It’s definitely not my usual image, and the entire process was a little outside my comfort zone, but I am happy with how it turned out.

What do you think?