So my friend Jeff Lynch over at Serious Amateur Photography has been taking some really amazing shots of wildflowers as of late, and that got me inspired to photograph some of my own. Unfortunately for me there have been winds, thunderstorms, and rain all day today making photographing out in the open a bit difficult when trying to get a small wildflower tack sharp in 20+ MPH wind.

So I did the next best thing that I could think of and went to the flower shop. Right now with Easter this weekend there are a lot of varieties of flowers to choose from. So I snagged an Orchid, Cala Lily, and a Rose from the shop and headed to the house. I lucked out and had to display boards ( the type kids use at science fairs ) and left one in its wrapping because it made a great reflective surface, and the other I unwrapped and used as a backdrop. I decided to use and old trick that Moose and Joe taught me. Which was to put the camera in Manual mode set it to 1/250th of a second and then adjust the f/stop to what I wanted. If you do this right and take a pic, you will see a black screen on your camera display because setting the camera up like this creates an almost pitch black effect.

I got the camera dialed in then broke out the flash units to give me the light I wanted. I set both my 430ex and 580ex to slave mode and put them in group C, which basically gives you a great looking fill light. From there I started clicking away and had a good couple of hours of shooting. Here is what I caught.

This Cala Lily was lit from the top left with the 580ex and I used the 430ex to bounce of the whiteboard to give some depth. I finished this in Silver Efex Pro in Lightroom 2.0. Quick and easy..

Snapped this Orchid in almost the same manor except I turn the 430ex flash and pointed it directly at the back of the Orchid to back light it.

This Rose was shot in the same manor as the Cala Lily except I threw a diffuser in front of the 580 ex flash from the top left to soften it a bit more.

All in all I had a great time shooting for a few hours, and it only cost me $10 in flowers.

UPDATE:

Here is a rough sketch of the setup for photographing the Orchid, it’s painfully obvious why I take photographs and not sketch.

What a day!!!  The NAPP Photo Safari was a great one as always, and it was a blast.  Moose and Joe worked their magic with a pair of models.   Plus the surrounding landscape lent itself to some amazing photos.  Here are a few from the day.

We went out this morning with the Base camp students for round 2 with the Dall sheep, and we won!!! We had 3 rams and 4 ewes that hung out with us for almost 2 hours before they headed back up into the mountains after feeding. What a great morning…

Captured with 1D Mark IIN 600f4 on Lexar digital film