Another approach to take pictures of flowers.

Hi Pentaxians and friends,

It seems that everybody likes to photograph flowers. I'm not the biggest fan of flower pictures, but a few weeks ago, I saw an article about this woman that was taking pictures of flowers at night. I believe she started at the Montreal botanical garden. If I remember correctly, she now has a book out.

Anyway, from the little I know about her techniques, I understand that she uses a flashlight to illuminate the flowers. So tonight, I stopped at the grocery store and purchased a few flowers. I needed to get some flowers for my wife anyway, so that she would forgive me for what I have done or didn't do. I don't know what I've done wrong, but she must know! You know...more flowers = more lenses.

After giving her the flowers, maybe an hour later, I told her I would take photographs of her flowers. I used a flashlight and attached it to one tripod. I got my K20D, used the 70mm limited with a +2 close-up filter (I don't have an AF macro lens yet). With the camera on a tripod as well and with a remote shutter release, I turned all the lights off and use the flashlight only.

I took several shots and the results above are some of the shots that I got. I do like the the way it brings the flowers out. I can imagine what kind of results can be achieved with fresh cut flowers and with several kind of flowers, all with different colors.

Of course, the typical water droplets to simulate morning dew are from spraying water on the flowers. It's not completely natural, but everybody does it. You actually cannot imitate nature perfectly as morning dew water droplets are much smaller and typically coats the entire flower with a light film of water.

Try it, I think it does give good results. I spent about 15 minutes to photograph the flowers and about two hours converting the files from RAW to JPEG and writing this blog. I bet if someone devotes an entire evening at it, some awesome shots will emerge. I'd like to see yours.

Best Regards,

Yvon Bourque