Pixiq

This is the third part of a series on ways of bringing impact to your flower photography and it deals largely with photographing flowers against the pure white provided by a backlit acrylic (Perspex) panel.

The technique is not new for the late, great Richard Avedon realised the visual impact of pure white. Susan Middleton and David Lüttschwager took up that approach in their ground breaking work. My own 'conversion' to the cause is more recent and derives unashamedly from the inspirational work of two very good friends of mine; Niall Benvie (Scotland) and Clay Bolt (USA) both highly talented and innovative photographers who have set up the MYN (Meet Your Neighbours Project) ... our strong links have grown, via the internet, contributing (with Andrew Parkinson) to the same shared blog “Images from the Edge” with its eclectic mix of photography/conservation/philosophy and some edgy stuff!

We live in amazing times when the pace of technological advance outstrips our ability to keep pace and we are provided with the means to indulge ourselves with a vast variety of techniques and approaches. Some will work, some will not but the important thing is to keep exploring, and to push your own boundaries…it is both more fun and much more satisfying. When it comes to absolutes in photography and elsewhere, I take an uncompromising philosophical stance: there just ain't none.

Here are two contrasting approaches: the first a brief addition inspired by a recent experience.

Working with what you have:

You can set out on a day’s jaunt (as I did less than 24 hours ago as I write this) with the sun shining and head off into the hills: I left home at 6.00am in bright sunshine on a 3 hr drive up to Gran Sasso in Italy’s central Apennines. I took my last shot of the day some 7 hours later being stung by hail stones and a bitter wind. Happy days – not my choice of conditions but, as the man said, you must try to see the opportunities in adversity even when you are cold and dripping wet. Just before the sky went black there was bright light in the foreground and dark background skies - the reverse of what I mentioned in my last post on backlighting with bright skies behind the subject.

Controlling lighting conditions:

The opposite approach lies in trying to control the lighting conditions and other conditions of your surroundings using a 'field studio' with flash. The idea is to create a pure white background that both isolates the subject and additionally provides backlighting to reveal details you did not realise were there.

When I first saw the white background work from Niall and Clay, I certainly liked it but in my current 'phase' was then working with ultra-wides to get in as much background as possible, and tele-macro lenses to isolate subjects against a blurred, colored background.

However, what appealed, the more I saw, was the ‘feel’ of the results they were getting – very much in the spirit of the best of botanical / natural history illustration. The white background has the effect of focusing a viewer’s attention on the subject itself  by excluding distracting detail. But it does far more in emphasising translucent parts, from flower petals to insect wings or the parts of amphibian feet…it adds a unique ‘glow’.

Quickly, I found I was looking at familiar subjects (such as the plethora of wild orchids that flower locally at this time of year) in a very different way. I was seeing them anew - literally in a different light and that, for me, was the clincher.  I was (and am) hooked. It is always a boon to have yet another way of interpreting nature with a camera – anything to shake off apathy and out of complacency through the ability to choose a photographic method or style as the whim takes you. Variety is, as they say, the spice of life which is as true in photography as anywhere else.

If this method of working appeals to you and you want a more detailed discussion of exposure, possible set ups and the rest then treat yourself to Niall’s book (Outdoor Photography Masterclass) – there is a lot more beside included in what is one of the few really inspirational books available on Outdoor Photography. I have also provided a lot more detail and discussion of this technique with close-ups in Digital Close-up Photography Q&A....coming soon from Lark.

Here, I have outlined a basic approach to get you started and getting results.

• Set a translucent white acrylic panel behind your subject. An accessory flash set on Manual is employed behind this to illuminate the panel uniformly, providing a consistent level of brightness  and a degree of backlighting. You can make it appear as pure white by lighting it from the rear in this way.

• Flash units operated by the camera’s TTL system (or a diffused manual flash) then provide frontal lighting for whatever subjects you place in front of the panel
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• Getting the right exposure to produce a perfectly white background can be tricky, but experimentation pays off. Start by setting the camera for Manual exposure and pointing it at the white acrylic panel without the subject present. Use the highest sync speed available (e.g. 1/250) with a small aperture (f/20 or f/22) and fire the flash (set in Manual flash mode) behind the acrylic and review the recorded image.
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• Note power ratio and flash distance so you can repeat the set-up in the future. I use a Nikon SB900 with its white reflector extended and head angle upwards to throw a good wide beam

• Then set up your subject and light it with your TTL flash system - I use the control unit from my Nikon RICI system to allow DTTL control of the foreground flash heads and keep the background on manual. It also works just as well with the background flash triggered by a small photocell plugged into a cable to the flash and a single diffused flash for frontal lighting.

• Make a series of images to be sure you are achieving a balance between detail and translucence. The front flashes might need to be compensated by slight over-exposure if the meter ‘sees’ the white panel and thus underexposes because of too much light.
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• The distance between subject and background is important. A pure white background acts as a backlight, making the subject appear to glow, producing a translucent look around its outline that enhances edge details such as fine hairs on flower stems or insect legs. The nearer the background is to the subject, the stronger the illuminating effect. With dark or opaque subjects, the background is best kept close; with lighter subjects, move it further back.

• It might help to set the camera to show overexposed areas during image review—the background area should blink, but not the foreground.

• Results viewed in your imaging program might seem a little pale but can quickly be restored by moving the black slider to the right close to where the histogram starts to rise. In Lightroom I also use the Clarity control to increase local contrast. The results have an intriguing mix of frontal lighting and back which gives a translucency unobtainable in any other way. You might also have an individual preference for ‘soft’ images or for making things crisper. You can choose.
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NB for regular use, the flash setup should produce consistent results, providing pure white from corner to corner. Check histograms of the recorded background in your imaging program—they should read 255 in each color channel. With practice, you will get to know what works.

What subjects work well against a white background?

Flowers, invertebrates, amphibians, and reptiles all look great against a pure white background because the backlighting through the acrylic panel often reveals a translucency at subject edges creating a kind of glow.

Check out the MYN website and also MYN on Facebook for regular posting of new and inspiring images from an international range of contributing photographers