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

Yellow daisy shot using a Orbis Ring Flash in the background and a Lumiquest Softbox III as main light







Today I had to take some studio shots and at the end of the session I stole one of my wife's flowers and had some fun. While taking some pictures of it with the Orbis Ring Flash I had the idea of using that very light modifier as a background, centering the flower in the black hole that is commonly used to stick the lens.

The how-to... Lumiquest Softbox III
on camera left, Orbis Ring Flash
as background



I adjusted the camera on the tripod to have the flower exactly in the middle of the black hole and did few test shots. The ide was cool but I needed an extra light to bring up the flower a bit. All that backlight couldn't do it by itself.

So I added an extra SB800 with a Lumiquest Softbox III and..voilá

Flowers anyone?

A while ago I set up my mini portable studio to do a bit of work on some nice flowers I had bought to my wife. It took me a good deal of the afternoon to find the light I liked the most, and even now I'm not 100% sure that this is THE best light. Thus, maybe there's no BEST light. what could be good for me might not be good for you, and viceversa. Same thing happens with colors and here you have a clear example.

In both images I had one SB600 through translucent umbrella on camera right, an old and uncontrollable Metz to light the background triggered with a slave and a reflector on camera left. It was before my 4 flashes set, and the old Metz spilled a bit too much of light here and there, yet these images are important to me, it was my first experiment with flowers. By the way, I like the blue one better....