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.

Giving your flower shots dramatic lighting.

Oftentimes you see flower shots from calendars or websites that have a very dark background...usually all black. These kinds of shots are very simple to do. All you are going to need is:

A studio light with a modeling lamp, or continous lighting.

A tripod.

A camera (of course)

A dark background...it's not necessary but it helps a lot.

A snoot, or barn door...again it's not necessary but it helps.

A reflector...a white piece of cardboard will do.

 I love doing dramatic lighting shots. Sometimes it takes away all the distractions and focuses mainly on your subject.

Attach the snoot or barn door to the light, place it around 45 degrees on top of the subject, either left or right, it's up to your personal preference. Turn the modeling light on, or if you are using a continous light just turn it on and focus the light into the subject. Adjust the light so that most of the hard shadows in the shot are gone. Remember, shadows are the key to a good dramatic lighting. The right amount of shadows will define your subject. 

If you are using a dark background, place it behind the subject. The farther the better. For flower shots I usually place them around 3 feet of more behind the subject.

Attach you camera to your tripod and frame your subject to how you want it. If your camera has live view, use it. Turn on live view and zoom into the part of the subject where you want it focused. Move your focus ring till the subject gets really sharp. You should be using manual focus for this. After focus has been set turn live view off. If you don't have live view, focus on the subject by using the viewfinder.

  

For these shots I used a 70mm macro. Macro lenses give you a razor sharp image with a wide open aperture. 

Set your camera to manual mode. Set your desired aperture. For these kinds of shots, I close the aperture a bit to get maximum sharpness. It's up to your taste how you want to set your aperture. Look at your meter and set your shutter. The meter should be around the 0 mark. Oftentimes I dial in my shutter to be a bit above the 0 mark but not too much. 

If you are shooting alone you need to hold your reflector towards the subject to minimize the harsh shadows. Try adjusting the reflector to however you want it. When you finally see the reflector position you want, try to remember that. Or an easier way is to just attach your reflector to a stand and let the stand hold it for you.

Set your camera to timer and press the shutter. While the timer is counting down, position your reflector to where you remembered the best position for it. Wait till the shutter opens and closes before making any drastic moves. Remember you are not using strobes for this shot. Check the image and tweak your settings to your desire.

If any of the background is showing, you can basically post process it to make it look darker.

Backlighted shot

For one of my entries for the 2012 Chicago flower and garden show I decided to do a people and plants/flower shot. I had this concept of including 2 people in the shot holding a single rose. But instead of the usual portrait lighted up in the front I decided to use backlights, make it look a bit different. I wanted to just outline the 2 people and make the rose the center of focus. I thought that it will make the shot more interesting than a usual couple holding a rose shot.

So for this shot, I used a plexiglass light table. I had a light table that was 40" across...that will give me plenty of room to move around my camera for my desired framing. I lit up the back of the light table with a strobe equipped with a softbox. The softbox evens out the lighting so I don't get a really hot spot in the middle of the frame. For me to be able to grab attention to the rose that were holding, I lit that up with a strobe from above...attached to a light boom. To prevent light spillage from the light above, I attached a snoot with a grid and aimed it at the rose, the snoot concentrates the light into one spot and prevents light spillage. Be very careful when using a snoot with some strobes, especially with modeling lights, as the modeling lights tend to heat up the snoot enough to melt the plastic housing of some lights. I had to turn it off after I know where its aimed so the temperature stays cool for my strobe.

I then attached my camera to my tripod, attached my wireless shutter release to the body, set my focus to manual and focused to where I expect the flower will be, since I will be triggering the camera myself I needed to prefocus it because it's really troublesome to have autofocus set with this kind of shot. I set my aperture to f14 so I have enough depth of field between the flower and our faces...by the way, that's me and my fiancee holding the rose if I forgot to mention that.

We did a couple of test shots but our faces and our hands seem to be out of the frame in every shot and I don't have any idea of our positioning was right. I then tethered my dslr to my desktop to let us see the preview while I shoot and without moving our heads and our hands. The tethering helped a lot, we adjusted our heads and hands till we got the shot.


The finalized shot

So my photo won 1st place for people and plants category. Hopefully I win again next year.

Using a snoot for your shots

One very important light modifier used by photographers is the snoot.




















A snoot is basically a cone placed in front of the flash to direct light into a concentrated area. Some snoots have honeycombs that basically softens the edges of the light so you get a softer light falloff. You can also put colored gels in front of them too.

I use the snoot to create highlights on areas of my background so it doesn't look so plain.

































I have one of those really cheap ones that you can buy online made of aluminum. With these you have to be very careful especially when using your modeling lights as these can get really hot, hot enough to melt the plastic parts of your studio lights. You can actually turn the modeling lights on to aim the snoot, then turn them off when you're ready.

I've also seen a lot of do it yourself snoots online made of cardboard or plastic. There really isn't much to them, they are just cones, so if you can make one then go ahead.