Studio Photography Workshop - Part 5

In the final session of the workshop, the students worked together using Nikon D300 equipment on two scenarios: to photograph a pair of roses under contre-jour lighting and to photograph a single rose lit to highlight its form.

We set up the sets for these subjects from scratch following the methods described above.

For the roses, we used a single fill light to light up the centre of the flower as well as a reflector to bring some vitality to the leaves. The resulting image was as follows.

Image 1: Roses backlit with fill light and reflector

We also tried spritzing the flowers and leaves with the following result.

Image 2: Roses after spritzing

I do not think that the spritzer significantly improves the end result, so I would choose image 1.

Image 3: Rose with lighting to show form

The single rose was lit with a main light from right side and a fill light from behind the camera. I quite like the delicate color of the petals of this flower. Unfortunately, there are some brown spots appearing in the creases of the petals which detract from the image. This illustrates Richard's tip that it is essential to have a subject in perfect condition without blemishes.