Jan 15, 2011

Fine Art Orchid Flower Macro Photography

This photo shows my usual set up at home when photographing flowers using a white or black background. Here you can see my macro photography set up for a purple orchid flower photograph using a black cardboard as the backdrop. I prefer to set up my close up photography studio next to our dining room window because it provides beautiful lighting in the morning. As a base I use a chair that I place in front of the window. I then use a large enough black cardboard from Staples that I position behind the floral photographic object using the backrest for support. White cardboards are used to enhance the light and direct the light towards the floral when it is facing away from the window. I always use hardcover books to stabilize and minimize any unwanted shaking or movement of the flower. Additionally the books make it easy to adjust the height of the flower when a different perspective or angle is more desirable. I often adjust the white boards to explore the impact on the lighting and better control the light on the flower. Adjusting the light with the white boards is a great learning experience for us photographers and often leads to more inspirational and beautiful photographs. In the final macro photograph of the purple orchid I positioned the flower in the best possible way so that there were no other distracting branches or flowers in the composition. The closed bulbs provided a wonderful foreground and I used the branch to lead the viewer through the photograph towards the blooming orchid flowers. The aperture was set to f/6.3 providing an exposure time of 0.8/second. An ISO50 setting minimized noise. which turned out to be a problem for this image. In the post processing steps I had to adjust for the aforementioned noise and removed dust. I then minimally adjusted brightness, contrast and color saturation before sharpening the image of the orchid.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for stopping by and reading my blog about fine art orchid flower photography D. Moore. Glad you like the floral image and found the blog useful. Hope you come back often! My best, Juergen

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  2. Out of curiosity. Why no foreground light to boost the detail in the full flower.

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  3. Thanks for being curious Anonymous. Nothing wrong with adding a kiss of light with a flash ... personally I prefer all natural and use white cardboard at home to direct light into the darker elements of the composition.

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