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.



8 comments:

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

    ReplyDelete
  2. 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

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

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

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 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.

      Delete
  5. 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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 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.

      Delete