My winner at the 2013 Chicago Flower and Garden show

This years Chicago flower and garden show had another photo contest. I decided to enter all categories. The categories they had were people and plants, landscapes, macro, abstract, and still life. The photos displayed in the show all deserved to be winners. The photos included flowers, tress, people, vegetables and other subjects related to plant life.

For my best entry this year I decided to go with very dramatic lighting. One way to achieve that is using minimal lighting to produce shadows everywhere. Spot lighting is a very common way of producing really dramatic shots.

I used one Mettle strobe light attached to a boom pole positioned it around 45 degrees from the front of the subject. To concentrate the light, I attached a snoot to the strobe. I then triggered the strobe with a wireless trigger connected to my Canon 6D. I then used my Canon 50mm 1.4 lens as it is excellent for doing portraits. Also the 50mm gives you the look of an actual scene you'd see with a human eye, which means the perspective is as normal as you'd see it in real life. A very important thing to consider to make the viewer the the portrait as life like. 

I then triggered the camera using my iphone...which is one of the 6d's awesome features. The smartphone triggering is especially useful when doing self portraits as it gives you real time previews of the shots, so you can adjust your position accordingly.

My winner this year.

The photo turned out great. I processed it using Lightroom. My photo ended up snagging the best photo for people and plants category.

Macro with a water drop

 For a photo contest I am entering this week I decided to do a macro shot of a drop of water with a reflection of a rose. The shot had to be really precise as the water drop should be really in focus. In this situation there are things you have to remember, you have to keep your camera really steady, the light should be enough for you to close down the aperture of your lens to get the maximum depth of field, and you should be using a lens that will get you close enough to see the little drop of water.

For this shot here are the equipment I used:
Canon 6D body
Yong nuo wireless flash trigger
Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro USM lens
Canon 430ex II speedlite
light stand
Manfrotto 190XPROB Pro Aluminum Tripod
Yellow/orange paper background
Studio clamp

I setup my camera on my tripod. The Manfrotto 190XPROB Pro Aluminum Tripod is an excellent tripod to use for this kind of shot because it lets you setup your camera forward to whatever you are shooting. I needed that extra reach forward so my subject is closer to my lens without the tripod legs getting in the way. I then placed a rose bouquet in front of my lens so I have a leaf that I can put water on for my droplet. I then placed another rose on a studio clamp and placed it behind the first bouquet...this rose is the rose that will be showing up on the water drop that I will photograph. I then placed my colored paper behind the 2nd rose.

The simple setup for this shot.

I then placed my speedlite on my Yongnuo wireless receiver so I can trigger it wirelessly from my camera. I set the flash to manual mode and set my flash to around 1/2 power. The flash was placed on the right side of the subject rose. I then aimed it towards my 2nd rose. I then placed my tripod with the camera in front of the rose bouquet. I set the focus to manual and then I focused on the leaf where I'm putting my water droplet at. I then sprayed the leaf with water till the water was heavy enough to form a drop on it's lowest point.

It takes a while to find the perfect placement.

I then used liveview to focus my lens into the droplet. Liveview allows you to zoom in to whatever you are focusing which is really helpful when photographing something small. When I got the perfect position for everything, I then tried some test shots to see how much light I needed for my shot. I ended up with an f11 aperture which was enough coverage for a shot like this. When everything was in place, I triggered my camera using my smartphone so I wouldn't have to touch the camera and prevent it from moving...a very useful feature of the 6D that other cameras don't have.

The final shot.

It is a very simple setup with outstanding results. I printed it out on luster paper and the results were outstanding.