Award Winning New England Fine Art Photography by Greater Boston photographer Juergen Roth. This photo blog provides photo tips, stories behind photography images, and plenty of inspiration.
This flower photography blog post was inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe, who I consider one of greatest artists of the 20th century. I compiled some of my personal favorite Orchid Photography Artwork and the selection varies from floral abstracts and portraits to Orchid flowers in full bloom. All Orchid flower photography fine art pictures were taken in my home studio located near Boston where I Discovered Forms and mastered The Art of Flower Photography.
The other day I made my way over to the Boston Arnold Arboretum for an unusual photo excursion. I regularly visit the arboretum during all New England seasons to pursue Nature Photography at its best and most convenience. It is such a fantastic and unique destination for tree, leaf, blossom, or fall foliage photography but this time I was all programmed for skyline photography. Earlier that week my wife and I took a stroll and I used the opportunity to scout Bussey Hill for a suitable location. I had a shot like this in mind for years but was never able to convey it into a pleasing image because the tree canopy was always in the view. This time I found a wide enough opening because early in the year leaves blocking the view is not a huge hurdle. After setting up the tripod and camera I decided to use the Canon 70-200mm lens with a 1.4x tele converter. This combination allowed me to precisely frame the skyline with the Prudential Center to the left, the John Hancock Building to the right, and houses of Jamaica Plain in the near foreground. The long lens combination beautifully compressed the perspective which I desired to make the image work. I manually focused and metered on the Prudential Center to achieve maximum detail in my Beantown Skyline Photography. Once the sun finally set I started shooting at about 1 minutes intervals until the sky turned dark. At one point 4 or 5 geese flew by and the sound of the wings in the dark of the early night gave me the shivers and I thought I was part of the Twilight Saga. Nonetheless, I hung in and captured a few more frames before packing up. At ISO 100, the aperture was set to f/5.6 resulting in a 6 seconds exposure time. In the digital post processing steps I removed dust spots, minimally adjusting lighting and color saturation before sharpening the final Boston Skyline image.
This week spring will be in full swing here in Boston. Temperatures will be soaring and it is that time of the year that I look so much forward to during the cold long New England winters. It is exciting and inspiring to come across the first snowdrops; crocuses bloom shortly thereafter in flashing yellow, purple and white. It is this beautiful reawakening of nature when I get ready for outdoor photography. In this blog post I compiled 15 spring flower photo tips that should inspire and help you capturing these precious spring and floral moments around your house, garden, parks and arboretums:
The other week I got my hands on a pink and a purple orchid. The purple orchid turned out to be a rather disappointing photography investment but of course I enjoy daily looking at it ... no hard feelings! The pink one on the other hand was a great find and allowed me to add 4 pictures to my existing Orchid Flower Fine Art Photography Gallery. If you are a regular visitor or reader of my photo blog you may know by now that I prefer to set up my close up photography studio next to our dining room window. This window faces east and provides exceptional and beautiful morning light bouncing off my neighbors' walls into our dining room. As a base for the flower I use a chair and books that I place in front of the window. Because I prefer working with natural light I use white cardboards to direct light towards the floral when it is facing away from the window. Adjusting the white boards to explore the impact on the lighting and better control the light on the flower is a great learning experience. It is a very delicate process and one has to watch carefully to notice the adjustment for maximum impact. I am still sometimes surprised on its affect and how it positively enhances the quality of a picture. In the final macro photography of the pink orchid I positioned the flower in the best possible way that allowed the right amount of back-lighting leading to a more pleasing floral image. I chose a small aperture setting (large f-stop number) of f/32 that provided sufficient depth of field and an exposure time of 5 seconds. During post processing steps I removed dust spots, adjusted lighting, contrast and color saturation before sharpening the final macro photography image of the pink orchid "Extremely Loud and Incredible Close".
Magical twilight colors combined with the Boston Skyline and landmarks like the Prudential Center and John Hancock Building have become one of my favorite photographic subjects when I am not occupied with nature photography. I find it amazing when everything comes together in a few minutes and the city lights arise while the sky turns beautifully turquoise. I compiled 15 twilight photo tips that should help you get started in your own personal endeavor of capturing these precious moments ... make sure to embrace photo tip #15 for more beautiful and wow factor nature photography results:
