This week my wife and I had our first serious walk of the year around her garden.
Everything was competing for a place in the sun, and the colours were beginning with white being the most prominent.
I guess that might be because the first flowers to bloom in my wife’s garden this year were her white daffodils, and there are lots.
We were looking for flowers to bring inside the house, so the abundant daffodils were the natural selection.
In March of 2013 I wrote, “Photographing an Orchid in the Bathtub.”
In that article I discussed how one morning, I realized that a lone blooming orchid that my wife was watering on top of an upside down plastic barrel in our bathroom tub was a photo opportunity in the making.
At that time I could see a back light beginning to come through the frosted bathroom window and the slight beginnings of a back glow on the flower. It was in the morning and I knew within an hour or so the sun would move to that side of the house and continue in a southern arc for the rest of the day.
It was with that in mind that we decided it would be fun to photograph the daffodils before Linda chose a final location to display them in the living room.
One could set up a small studio for flower photography anywhere in a house. I even have a small diffusion box especially designed for product photography.
Nevertheless the soft diffuse light coming through the frosted bathroom window glass is almost perfect for flowers.
I found another plastic five gallon barrel, placed it up side down in the tub with the white daffodils on top, and set up a speedlight coupled with an umbrella on a light stand to photograph the daffodils.
When I photographed that orchid it was early morning. However, this time it was late morning and a more direct light was coming through the bathroom window. So I took the outer cover off the big five-in-one reflector I have and it became another layer of diffusion when I placed it between the daffodils and the window.
All I had to do then was point my 135mm lens, shoot, arrange the flowers, shoot again and rearrange.
When I mentioned to Linda that the flowers would look good as a black and white photo she said. “Everything is pretty much monochromatic anyway”, so it was with a final b&w image in mind that I took the picture.
These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at emcam@telus.net. Stop by Enman’s Camera at 423 Tranquille Road in Kamloops. I sell an interesting selection of used photographic equipment. Call me at 250-371-3069.