How to nail a dead hogweed...

Someone asked me a day or so ago how best to photograph a hogweed skeleton in order to separate it from its background. I glibly said, as you do in your comments, photograph it against the sky though you might end up with a hogweed silhouette. Afterwards I thought that perhaps I should put my my money where my mouth is and try it myself. Fortunately we have a whole field of hogweed just round the corner from us and there was scarcely a cloud in the sky so I had ideal conditions to experiment.

Firstly I discovered that very few hogweed grow up straight so it was easy to end up with a slanting image or sloping ground at their base. Secondly I found that it was in fact very difficult, not so much to separate them from other plant as they tend to shoot up much higher than most other plants but to separate them from each other.

It was possible using lightroom and the shadow slider to put in a bit of detail in most of the silhouettes (see 1 & 2) but it was much better if you could face well away from the sun and get some side lighting on their fluted stems as well as more saturated skies. (3 & 4)

However, I think my favourite is the one where the background does intrude but it is sufficiently blurred for the hogweed to stand out clearly (1) I'd be interested to hear you opinions and I suggest you do view it LARGE to make your comparisons.