Pixiq

This series of photographs, is here as an example that you don’t need to go far to photograph different subjects. In fact, you can do a lot of photography at your kitchen table. I do. Here I share some of my tricks, with flowers, flash and quince fruits waiting to become marmalade.

I love to go outside to photograph flowers. It’s a good excuse to go to public gardens, to go up and down hill after the good location, the good light… and the absence of wind. But  I am not picky and I photograph flowers anywhere I can. When we go to visit my wife’s mother I always carry a camera, because I know she might have something new in her garden or vases. And I even photograph flowers at home, from the different species we have from time to time, either bought or cultivated from seeds.

My flower photography workshops are usually done outside, but I am seriously thinking about giving them indoors, sometimes, because of various reasons: it’s getting more difficult to photograph in public gardens, with security guards forbidding you, and some of the places  are not cared for as before, so there’s less to photograph there. And because some techniques are better explained and experienced when you can control all conditions, doing it at home is getting more and more as a viable option.

Photographing flowers at home also lets you create more long terms projects, maybe following the changes of vased flowers. And you don’t need a garden or a lot of space. In fact, I do some of my flower photography sitting at my kitchen table. And one of these days I just decided this was something I wanted to share with my readers, so here it is: my personal recipe for shooting flowers sitting down. And as the images show it can be very different from frame to frame.

My kitchen table has a great light during the day and it’s one of my favourite corners in the house when I want to photograph. With a pot of coffee nearby I don’t even need to walk much to keep the pace. But working there at night one needs to rely on flash to get things done. And believe, me, flash is a great “natural light”.

For this I am using two flashes, the Speedlite 420 EX on a Nasty Clamp with a Rogue FlashBender reflector (the smaller one, that also works as a flag or gobo to stop light from going out of the path I need), and a Speedlite 580 EX II on the camera as the commander of lights. Two small rectangles of Styrofoam from a box with material that came in the post are used… as reflectors. That’s it! With that little studio I can do a lot of different things, explore the use of the flashes, using the commander as main or fill light, forcing it to just “command” the second unit to work. Soon hours go by and you find you’re having a lot of fun without moving much.

This could not be done without flash, and that’s the reason why I always tell people they must learn how to use their own portable Sun. I could not do these pictures without the help of lights that I control. And this is not the harsh light people usually think is the sign of a flash being used. Being able to place the flashes away from the top of the camera helps. Either with a long cable, infrared or radio, you can do it and things start to become interesting.

The flash is an important part of this example, but the most important message here is something else: you don’t need to move much to do different photos of flowers. The four pictures here were taken from the same position – sitting on a chair – but using different backgrounds, from the “dark hole” of the kitchen door to the hall, using different exposures, to the wall with white tiles, ending on a tray filled with quince fruit waiting to become marmalade… and that gave me another interesting series of photos, when my wife finished. But that’s another story.

So, without moving much you’ve pictures that go from a pitch black background to a light yellow diffused background that suggests a field of flowers in a sunny day… although it’s a tray of quince!

This goes to show the possibilities you have within your space. You just have to look around. More than look, SEE. If you do, you will discover that you can do a lot of photography without going out from home. Without leaving the room. Without leaving your comfortable chair.

Try this at home. And if you feel you need some more advice on photographing flowers, but outside, go and buy my eBook “Flowers ... The Way I See Them - A Guide to Discover Your Own Path Through Photography”, that can really guide you through more adventures photographing flowers.