Flowers make for beautiful and very patient subject for your studio photo sessions. They don't move and have that inner (and outer) beauty that just need a bit of sensibility to come out and fill the frame. Thing is that I’m not a flower photographer, at least not one of those that ravenously search fields and botanical gardens, I’m rather one of those that when there’s a flower at home grabs it and put it in front of the camera. I’m also the one who usually brings the floral gifts so at least I can pick those I think can make a nice subject too. 

Photographing flowers for me means soft light, soft images, and mostly a low key shot, well at least now, maybe tomorrow I’ll go hard and high key, truly don’t know… My set for this session was based in two lights, one for the flower and the other for the background. I didn’t use any reflector pursuing my quest of a light gradually fading and leaving an area into a certain degree of darkness. The light for the background carried a blue gel, in order to create a color contrast with the subject and also because I love blue background, they’re way classy!

The main light for all shots was one of my SB800 through a Lastolite EzyBox on camera left, while the other SB800 was gridded with a Honlphoto grid pointing at the black background. For each one of these three shots I was looking for something different and I hope it shows. Details, lighting, point of view and depth of field and of course, there has been a bit of work in Lightroom to come up with the final image. Water spray was used to enhance reflections and textures in a couple of flowers, and I think it is a good plus. Hope you like them, if you need any further information please drop a comment

Is the Euro still floating ?

A concept more than a photo. 5 cents floating on a thin layer of water poured on a black vinyl background. A side light provided by an SB800 through a Lastolite EzyBox to enhance the texture of the coin yet not reflect on the background, trying to keep it as black as possible.

Is our currency still floating? The Dollar is coming back strong and we are loosing power with the major international currencies. Maybe is good for the Euro zone export economy, but sure is not for those who import a lot of goods from non Euro countries.

Metal Still Life

I studied THE BOOK “Light, Science and Magic” trying to understand the big deal of the Family of angles. Reflected and diffused light and did a bit of experiments

Using a black vinyl background and a metal lure can be a dangerous combination. I needed to keep the background black and make the lures shine, with a bit of reflection on the glossy plastic.

To achieve such result I used a combination of two lights, SB800 of course. One is bouncing the light off a big Lastolite 40” Umbrella box and the other one has an Orbis Ring Flash with it. Both light triggered with Nikon CLS.

First of all I made a sticky ball with duct tape to lift the jigs from the bottom. I put it in the back in order to achieve a bit of angle, reflect the light and show the length, height and width. Then I poured few drops of water to get more reflecting surface and decorate the image.

The Umbrella Box was placed 90º with the table. By doing so I had the light reflecting against the jigs but not the background that remained black. On the back of the jigs I had the other flash with the Orbis Ring to bring up the shadows a bit

Honestly, I love these still lives and will keep experimenting