I bought an orchid at the supermarket on my way home from work tonight to try to figure out how to take a nice picture of an orchid. I wanted to do this because my mother-in-law grows beautiful orchids and, one of these days, I would like to bring my camera to her place and photograph a few of them for her. So, here was my first night's attempt at orchids.
I was getting a bit bored of pure black backgrounds, so I went for a little bit of bokeh in the background courtesy of some Christmas lights that I unboxed for the occasion. Having white lights out of focus in the background always reminds me of sidewalk cafes in the city for some reason. Oh well, this was done in my basement, but I was going for a little bit of character.
I shot them with my D90 with the 50mm 1.4f lens. I didn't have it all the way open b/c I wasn't going for anything too extreme as far as a shallow depth of field goes. I had one umbrella'ed sb-600 above and one below the flowers - both fired with the D90's popup CLS trigger, which was set to "--". If anyone has advice as to lighting flowers, I would love to hear it. The background lights were a few feel back hanging off of a ladder.
Great idea adding the bokeh, really makes the photo pop.
ReplyDeleteYou inspired me to start my own blog after reading yours, thanks. It was easier than I thought it would be.