Tradescantia and ‘Green Man’ in UV Fluorescence

I like to try to see what different plants and materials look like with Ultra-Violet (UV) Fluorescence. A few days ago I tried photographing a wall mounted ‘Green Man’ head that is covered with a Tradescantia. The basic look was pretty boring but, by using different blending methods in Photoshop, I managed to get some interesting effects.

To start with this is the first basic image in both daylight and UV fluorescence (drag the slider to compare the 2 images):

Green man in the Tradescantia example 1. Daylight flash
Green man in the Tradescantia example 1. UV fluorescence

I then tried different way to blend the 2 images and came up with these 2 versions which, again, I am showing with a comparison slider:

Green man in the Tradescantia example 1. Blue blend
Green man in the Tradescantia example 1. Green blend

I was quite pleased with the blue effect but thought ‘This is a Green Man’, so I moved the colours to green! I do like the effect..

This is example 2 comparing the daylight flash and UV fluorescence:

Green man in the Tradescantia example 2. Daylight flash
Green man in the Tradescantia example 2. UV Fluorescence

And this is the green man effect:

Green man in the Tradescantia example 2. Green blended

An interesting exercise. I have other images with blend effects that I intend to write about later.