a single leaf

Horrid day, rain - didn't go out - so decided to see if I had actually learned anything yesterday by doing some macro by ordinary room lighting and long exposure. Picked this leaf from the ivy - couldn't find a little bug to add interest!
I must take a course on layers, I think. Yesterday's tutor showed our images on the screen and, with a couple of clicks, transformed our rather washed out black backgrounds (or any other colour) to lovely rich, deep black (or any other colour) with the object its original colour by using a mask.
Despite using a black background, the long exposure rendered it a muddy grey. It took me about 15 minutes to overlay a black layer then erase the bit over the leaf - don't know how to work a mask ;-( Worth the effort, though, despite the subject being rather boring. Just to see the difference it makes - look at yesterday's blip of the opals then look at this .This took more than 15 minutes because of the fiddly nature of the three pieces - but, again, worth the effort I think.