Headbangers' Weekly Challenge: Through the shop window

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Macro photography in a thunderstorm

Last night I decided that I'd actually make use of my home studio, as it as sat idle now for some 5 weeks! It was my wife's birthday yesterday and amongst the gold, jewels and fine silks I festooned upon her (actually just a pair of nice earrings...), was a nice bunch of seasonal flowers. So I carted through my tripod, camera, laptop (I shoot tethered to Lightroom in the studio because I like the big previews I get) and the flowers through just as a thunderstorm rolled into town. It was one of those storms where the ground shakes as the thunder goes off and even as a big, hairy fully grown man it still makes me jump when I first hear the initial 'CRACK'. Then the rain came!

 So to the soundtrack of about 100,000 gallons per second being dumped on the studio roof, I took some really nice macro shots of the flowers (which were Sunflowers and roses,comprising red, yellow and yellow/orange). I thought to make it look a bit more interesting I'd spray water on the flowers and as I'm typing I'm thinking "why didn't I just poke the vase and flowers out in the rain for a few seconds?", but I suppose I can't rely on the rain to come every time I want to shoot flowers (even if I do live in Scotland). So I emptied one of my wife's spray gel bottles and gave it a good clean out with hot water, including the spray mechanism and then filled it with cold water. I found that giving it a single squirt covered the flower in an unrealistic fine mist, so I would spray about 6-8 times and the droplets would then form large drops which looked a bit more like rain drops and fired away with the camera.

 I'll add the pictures later as I didn't get chance to edit them all last night. *Done*





The devil is in the detail, I suppose, so here's my settings: Nikon D3s + Nikon 105mm Micro VR @ f/22 (notice the spots you wouldn't normally see at wider apertures) 1/200th to sync with the Interfit head in softbox.

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8 comments:

  1. imac14 August 2012 at 15:49

    Looking forward to seeing, flowers in a thunder storm.
    Now Richard, who would have thought that you sprayed your flowers,lol.

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  2. Unknown14 August 2012 at 17:10

    Well, I suppose that should have technically been 'DURING a thunderstorm' but I had the door open a bit and a bit of rain came in...so does that count? lol

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  3. imac14 August 2012 at 23:35

    Anything, or mostly anything counts towards making a photo better. I guess.

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    Replies
    1. Unknown15 August 2012 at 14:35

      The cool air certainly helped me, and possibly the flowers too.

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  4. Anonymous15 August 2012 at 00:14

    Nice shots here Richard! Did you actually take the bouquet apart to capture these?

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    1. Unknown15 August 2012 at 14:35

      Thanks Gail. I didn't take it apart, no. I just rearranged it a bit :) That's one of the many benefits of macro photography, you can zero in on your subject and exclude everything else.

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  5. Unknown19 August 2012 at 00:42

    Great shots Richard. Macro isn't really an area that I've gone into. Think you need to have a special lens too. But it's good if you can them looking as good as these.

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    1. Unknown20 August 2012 at 12:05

      Thanks Christopher,

      Yea, you do need a special lens for macro photography. The one I've got is the 105mm VR micro Nikkor which does true 1:1 macro. It is also a PERFECT portrait lens as it has virtually zero distortion. Unfortunately my studio isn't big enough for me to use it as a portrait lens, but I do use it for outside portrait work. Highly recommend you look at this lens.

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