FLOATING FLOWERS
EQUIPMENT
metal bowl of water
Flower heads
macro screw on lens
D3100 Nikon DSLR
METHODOLOGY
For this shoot, I chose a very sunny day so that I could use natural light rather than artificial light, this meant that I avoided a yellow hue on my images although it also meant that the light was intermittent due to passing clouds. As a result of this, I was able to use an ISO of 100, and a fast shutter speed, I counter-balanced this with a relatively large aperture. I knew that I was going to be doing a macro shoot so I used a metal bowl as the backdrop of the photographs because I knew that it would emphasise the light reflections on the surface of the water and would not distract from the vibrant colour and petal pattern of the flowers. For my props, I used the heads of three different flowers of different colours and petal shapes, I chose the brightest and flattest flowers so that they would stand out and so that they could float for a sustained period of time for me to capture them on camera. Finally, I used a 52mm, +10 close-up macro lens on my DSLR Nikon D3100 camera and I used a combination of Auto-focus and Manual-focus.
Whilst carrying out the shoot, I found that when submerged too much, the leaves with smaller surface area would sink beneath the surface of the water and once they had done this they were no longer capable of floating next to the flowers. To combat this, I had to overlay the leaves on top of the petals to support them. To add to this, I also faced the difficulty that the exposure of my images kept changing depending on the unreliable cloud coverage, to overcome this, I had to constantly monitor and adjust my aperture.
The aim of the shoot was to capture the droplets of water that protrude when flicked onto the surface of the water-proof petals, I did this by using my hands to flick droplets onto the flower whilst it floated. However, when taking the photos, I also noticed and took particular interest in the distortion and ripples that were created around the edges of each petal as the top layer of the water was disturbed.
metal bowl of water
Flower heads
macro screw on lens
D3100 Nikon DSLR
METHODOLOGY
For this shoot, I chose a very sunny day so that I could use natural light rather than artificial light, this meant that I avoided a yellow hue on my images although it also meant that the light was intermittent due to passing clouds. As a result of this, I was able to use an ISO of 100, and a fast shutter speed, I counter-balanced this with a relatively large aperture. I knew that I was going to be doing a macro shoot so I used a metal bowl as the backdrop of the photographs because I knew that it would emphasise the light reflections on the surface of the water and would not distract from the vibrant colour and petal pattern of the flowers. For my props, I used the heads of three different flowers of different colours and petal shapes, I chose the brightest and flattest flowers so that they would stand out and so that they could float for a sustained period of time for me to capture them on camera. Finally, I used a 52mm, +10 close-up macro lens on my DSLR Nikon D3100 camera and I used a combination of Auto-focus and Manual-focus.
Whilst carrying out the shoot, I found that when submerged too much, the leaves with smaller surface area would sink beneath the surface of the water and once they had done this they were no longer capable of floating next to the flowers. To combat this, I had to overlay the leaves on top of the petals to support them. To add to this, I also faced the difficulty that the exposure of my images kept changing depending on the unreliable cloud coverage, to overcome this, I had to constantly monitor and adjust my aperture.
The aim of the shoot was to capture the droplets of water that protrude when flicked onto the surface of the water-proof petals, I did this by using my hands to flick droplets onto the flower whilst it floated. However, when taking the photos, I also noticed and took particular interest in the distortion and ripples that were created around the edges of each petal as the top layer of the water was disturbed.