I could not wait to photograph this month’s photo assignment! Olivet Baptist Church is looking for photos to use as a backdrop to their daily Scripture encouragement messages, using portraits of flowers.

The versatility of this assignment caught my attention. If you are like me, where winter is still hanging on (though with a weakening grasp!) or if you are in the middle of spring or summer on your side of the world, flowers are an easy subject to come by. Thanks to the modern convenience of many shopping locations, they are just a hop, skip and a jump away! For myself, having just come off of Valentine’s Day, I had a bouquet of red roses at my disposal. The main question I had was how to photograph these flowers in an attractive and compelling way.

My Attempt At A Studio Portrait of Flowers

For a long time I’ve wanted to take a professional studio portrait of flowers and this assignment created a perfect opportunity for me to do so! In the video, the very first photos I took were a comparison. My first shot is ambient light in a dark room, without any flash. This is what it looked like:

And that is exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want any ambient light to illuminate the flowers. I only wanted the light from the flash. In this way, I have complete control over the lighting.

Next, I took the exact same shot with the flash (unedited):

The flash is my only light source! That’s what I want. Now all I had to do was tweak things to get these flowers looking good. My main issue here was the flash being too bright. I lowered the settings and got these results (unedited):

An Illumnation Problem

Although the flash illuminated the single rose I had chosen as my main subject, it also lit up the entire boquet of flowers behind it. There was nothing I could do about it, so I did the next best thing and removed the rest of the flowers altogether (unedited):

I took my first shot of the single rose and the background was still illuminated! Initially I thought that the reason could be the umbrella spreading out the light. So, I removed the umbrella and shot it again (unedited):

It helped a little, but the flash was still hitting the background. So I adjusted the position of the flash to be more from the side, and got this (unedited):

The exposure is too bright, so I dramatically decreased my ISO. The flash is still emitting the same amount of light, it’s just that with a lower ISO, the camera is no longer as sensitive to the available light. Because of this, it makes the photo darker, bringing it into proper exposure (unedited):

Arriving At Perfection

We were getting somewhere! As you could probably tell in the video, at this point I was getting pretty excited. Roses are regal flowers and I felt that I was finally starting to capture that stately feel. But a little cry from the other room told me that Mordecai was ready for some supper and my videographer needed to hurry away to the kitchen and pull out our meal from the fridge. So that’s where the video ends. 🙂

Here’s what I did next when I came back to finish photographing this assignment later. First, I tweaked this pose to perfection:

And I like it! But it wasn’t looking like the example image (2nd photo) that I intended to duplicate. Plus, the light is too harsh. So, I changed things up a lot. I put the umbrella back on the flash to diffuse the light and moved the background several feet back to prevent the flash from hitting it.

I also picked a more full looking flower and completely changed my camera angle. The result was quite satisfying:

Pleased with that portrait, I moved on to the entire bouquet. (See reference photo here.)

The vase I had was not very flattering. Plus, I’m not an expert flower arranger, so I wasn’t as satisfied with this pose. And with only one main light source, I didn’t like how only one side of the bouquet was illuminated. However, I did the best I could:

I then proceeded to a third pose inspired by this photo. I knew I wouldn’t be able to photograph it exactly, but I was intrigued with the concept of warm light glowing behind the flowers.

First, I zoomed in on a flower that I liked and framed up something nice. I then took one of my video lights and placed it about 4 feet behind the flowers, setting it to a very warm and low brightness setting.

This didn’t really work (unedited):

I placed the video light behind the backdrop curtain. This diffused it very nicely! Now the square shape of the video light was no longer perceivable (unedited):

I just needed to tweak the composition, the position of the video light, angle and brightness of the off-camera flash, the flower arrangment and any little distractions that needed removed or covered up.

I would have tweaked more, but sadly, I ran out of time. I liked what I was able to get, though!

Now It’s Your Turn

Maybe you live where the flowers are starting to come up outside, or perhaps are in full bloom! If you are still buried in snow, perhaps you can buy some pretty flowers and try your hand at photographing them indoors. I’m looking forward to seeing the assignment submissions and your artistic portraits of flowers, both indoors and out!