If you have a garden, then you have no shortage of models this time of year, and they sit still and do what they’re told. We have several patches of irises in our gardens. We didn’t plant them, they were either here when we bought the place 21 years ago, or they’ve self-propagated over the years. Most are white, like this one, but there are at least two yellow ones, too (which should be out in a few days).
I’m not a very creative flower photographer, but to take a basic shot like this is pretty straightforward. And if you give a flower the right kind of light (big, soft, close), the highlights and shadows pretty much just work themselves out. (The softbox for this shot was about 8 inches to the left of the blossom.) This is not to say that it’s not a complex process, because it is—this image is made up of about five individual shots, and the post processing took the better part of an hour. But it’s not rocket science.
After I made this image last night, I put the stem in a jar of water, and this morning the bud on the left had bloomed beautifully.
I like the softness and subtle warm tones in this image.
Here’s the bigger Flickr version.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 100mm f/2.8 macro at f/10, ISO 100, 1/160th of a second, key light, reflector, 5-image focus stack, significant post processing
