One of the camera club members is talented at taking flora pictures.
I mean really talented.
Prize winning talented.
You get the idea.
Well, he was kind enough to demo his lighting approach and this is my take on it.
The key is to use soft light and to make sure it’s falling on the petals of the flower.
In these examples, I set a flashgun up directly over the flower, pointing up into a reflecting umbrella. The camera was set on F14 at 1/125 to make sure the only light getting used was that of the flash. A little playing with flash distance and intensity later and the results began to speak for themselves.
The black background is just an old piece of cloth I had sitting around.
My only criticism with the shot on the left is that I probably went a little overboard with the water spray!
It’s all pretty doable with minimal kit too. A flash cable will set you back about £10 on ebay and you can use tinfoil instead of an umbrella if you wish. The only advantage a stand and umbrella gives you is a flexibility in set up.
This second image has had a little more post processing on it. Nothing too major really by my standards, but I can never leave well enough alone
One thing I often forget when I proof a photograph is to double check the white balance. I tend to shoot on auto, but when you’re using flash guns that aren’t mounted on the camera (and using TTL as a result), it’s worth checking the white balance again when working on the raw image.
The shot below shows the rose with AWB on the left and “Flash” white balance on the right.
Looks like I’ll have to start buying my wife flowers…