![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nfgphoto.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Ironwood2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI was also inspired by some art-nouveau stuff I saw recently<\/a>. It’s a style I’ve always loved, but am way, way too talentless to emulate. <\/p>\n So I went looking for an image that I could cut out easily, and fount this shot of Dolly DeVille from a recent shoot. <\/p>\n I wanted to do a trellis and flowers and climbing vines but I decided, after adding a rectangle, that I would never ever finish that, and really, life’s too short. So I put some white around the box instead, and then added a gradient in order to preserve the cool shadows on the floor.<\/p>\n I added a bunch of contrast and it made the whole thing quite garish, so I removed it, except for the trailing flame. It looked a little bit 3D with the boost, and so I amped that up with some shadows.<\/p>\n Basically, anything outside the box has a dropshadow… but it’s too subtle at a small size, so I added it to the whole flame as well.<\/p>\n It wasn’t really working though. Like, it was cool, but it was… pointless, I guess. So I added a large white border, and this is where I felt it was really starting to get somewhere.<\/p>\n I stopped here for a while, but came back to it a while later and got rid of all the background outside the box.<\/p>\n And this was super great, but I thought… what if darker?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n