Photography Workshop - Flowers on Black Background

Well there's a compelling title! Anyway, yes, I am attending a photography workshop at my church every other Sunday. It's pretty basic (which is what I need) but it gives me a chance to learn and try new things. This week it was flowers. We had a short discussion on how-to's for shooting flowers using Scott Kelby's book, The Digital Photography Book #1, as source material. Then on to the application!

We shot using a black back drop held up on a rigging and draped over a table about three feet out. Light was supplied by 2 umbrella lamps (I have no idea what the technical term for them is but I'm going with umbrella lamps. The kind you see in Sears for kids photos). We moved the vases and flowers and turned off lamps as necessary. Here's what I got:

"Posed" shots aren't my favorite, I prefer naturally occurring. That being said, this is really my first attempt at posed flowers and it wasn't so bad. It took me a few moments to find my comfort zone but once I knew what I was looking for, I went with it. I still don't like the fact that I can't get my camera to "stretch" the photo like I want (another term I just came up with, stretch 1. to make the foreground and background look further apart by blurring one or the other. Sounds good eh?). I keep seeing too much detail in the background covering. I need to upgrade my camera to get what I want. Hopefully more on that in a later post!

One of the tips in the book was to take flower photos right after the rain. We so happened to have some of that earlier and I took advantage:

I'm sure I looked amusing to any passersby as I was laying on the wet ground, getting covered with mud and sticking my camera right up to flowers (again, would be solved by an upgrade). Ah, the sacrifices I make for my craft! I think they came out pretty well though.