Roses

A few months ago, I saw this terrific shot of a rose. Just the rose head, each petal perfect in shape and lit with a small amount of light. Deeps shadows stretch across the flower and the curl in the rose was without flaw. Made me wonder if I could take the same shot so I started to hunt for a perfect rose. Sadly, no such thing exists, but I did have an "ok" rose to shoot, and these are the results.

I set up shop in the kitchen with black felt as a background hanging on the wall. I had to secure the rose using clamps so it would show the side that I liked, and then had the camera on tripod with a flash externally linked with a Pocket Wizard. Too much light, and the rose turned purple, too little and you couldn't see it.

I ended up shooting the whole thing at 125/sec at F9 on ISO 100 with a 1/2 power flash bouncing off the ceiling. This combination gave me the correct color without the shadows being opened up too much.

Each month I buy a photo magazine and look at the photos and always say "I could do that" but never do. It was a cheap experiment at $7 for a rose and $5 for the felt. At least I can check that one off.