Low key flower photography tips

Gear:

• Macro lens
• Window for light or two constant light sources placed either side of your set-up
• Black background
• Flower
• Tape
• Container to hold your flower
• Tripod – Support your camera on a Vanguard Alta Pro 263AGH to prevent shake and to keep your hands free so you can adjust the position of the flower head.

Technique:
Photographing a flower head on a black background is a simple but effective way to make yourself a piece of wall art. The bright petals against a stark, dark background make a vibrant image that wouldn't look out of place on the shelves of stores that are designed to fill your home with accessories and decorations.

Lighting
If it's a sunny day you'll have plenty of free light falling through your windows to work with however, if it's a gloomy and really overcast you'll need a couple of constant light sources to place at either side of your set-up. You want just enough light so the petals have contrast and don't blend together. Take a look at the edge of the flower too as you don't want it to vanish into the background too much.

Background
You can use whatever you have to-hand as long as it's black and not reflective. As holding a flower still is rather hard work we used a plastic cup as a stand and taped the flower to it.
Take the shot
Don't use an aperture that's too wide as you'll lose too much detail towards the edges of the flower and if you're shooting straight on make sure the centre of the flower is sharp. Experiment with your shooting distance, taking shots of just the centre of the flower or try changing the position of the flower to shoot it on a slight angle.

Into Photoshop
Once you have your shots, get creative in Photoshop. Here are a few examples of what we did:

1. Zoom burst – Brightened the colours slightly then applied a Radial Blur (zoom). We then created a Layer Mask to remove the blur from the centre of the flower.

3. Pink Flower – Adjusted the contrast/brightness slightly, applied diffuse glow, reducing the grain amount to 0 and increasing the glow amount to 4. We then used the Magic Erase tool to remove some of the petals that were shrivelled.

4. Three Flowers together - We changed the colour of the flower by adjusting the Hue. We then created a new canvas and dragged each of the different coloured flowers into it.

Find the tripod and camera bag to suit your needs at www.vanguardworld.com