When we first hung this image in our gallery, people thought it was made using fancy studio lighting. They were all way off. We didn't use studio lights or even a speed light. In fact, no flash or artificial lighting of any kind was used in the making of this image! None. The total cost for the lighting equipment in this shot is less than two dollars. Here's how we did it — and how you can do it, too.
- No flash or other artificial lighting was used
- This image was shot in our living room
- We did some minor editing in Photoshop to fade out the stem at the bottom, remove the stick supporting the plant, ensure the background was completely black, and widen the black area around the orchid
Before we get to the Photo Recipe, let's analyze the image.
The flowers are predominantly white. That's actually very important to keep in mind! Photographing white objects can be extraordinarily difficult. You need to use a long enough exposure so the flowers don't turn out a dingy gray, but you don't want to go overboard and blow out the highlights, either. The key to photographing white flowers is to get the texture spot on. It's fair to say that this image is all about light and texture and not at all about color.
The background, of course, is solid black. We used inexpensive black fabric and taped it to the wall, about five feet behind the orchid.
Let There Be Light
Next, think about the direction the main light is coming from. Look carefully at where the shadows are. The main light is to the left. It's nothing more than afternoon sunlight streaming in through a west-facing picture window.
And here's what else is very important: The plant is not facing the window! It's perpendicular to the window. In other words, the left side of the plant is pointing toward the window and the right side is pointing into the room, away from the window. That's the single most important thing about this entire image! If the plant was facing the window, it would be getting all the light straight on. And that's a very bad thing, because straight-on light is very flat. (That's why you use flat lighting to minimize wrinkles when you shoot portraits.) With flat lighting, everything would look the same shade of white, and we'd completely lose any sense of texture and three-dimensionality.
Earlier, we said this photo is all about texture. And we've also said that flat lighting hides texture. So, we need to avoid flat lighting. We want the light skimming across the orchid. By using this very simple technique of “cross lighting,” we can maximize the texture. We played a bit, rotating the entire flowerpot until we found the perfect orientation. In the end, the plant is rotated a tiny bit toward the light.
Composing the Photo
You really need to put your camera on a sturdy tripod. It's the only way to get a truly sharp image. If your camera has a place to plug in a remote shutter release, do it. If not, you can set the self-timer so your fingers won't be in contact with the camera when the shutter fires. When you compose the image, be sure to fill the entire frame with the flower, almost to the edges. The extra black space you see around the orchid in the finished image was added by increasing the canvas size in Photoshop. If you don't fill the entire camera frame with the flower when you shoot the photo, you're just wasting pixels.
Next, you need to decide whether to zoom wide (or use a wide angle lens) and move in close, or zoom in (or use a longer focal-length lens) and move the camera back. We chose the latter because the smaller angle of view with a longer focal length meant we could use a smaller piece of black fabric. Next, we decided where to focus. We chose the colored center of the second flower from the left. That seemed to be the natural center of attention when we looked at the overall plant.
We're not telling you about the camera we used. That's because you can achieve the same results whether you use a pocket-size point-and-shoot camera or a big DSLR. What's important is that your camera lets you adjust the exposure.
We put the camera on the tripod and took a shot. Here's what we got:
So, what wrong with the image? It's just awful, isn't it?
The exposure was off, but we fixed that in subsequent shots. And the composition was mediocre. We fixed that by raising the camera several inches. But, the main problem is that the right side of the orchid is way too dark. That's what you'd expect, because the sunlight is coming through the window from the left. We need to get plenty of light bouncing back into the plant. And bounce is the operative word. Here's where our two-dollar investment in lighting equipment comes in: we used a piece of white foam board as a bounce card.
But where to place our bounce card? Since the main light is coming from the left, we held the foam board to the right of the orchid, fiddling with the angle until we got a bounce light that added just the right amount of glow. We ended up holding it to the right and a bit in front of the orchid.
And here is the Photo Recipe we used to make this image:
Ingredients:
- White orchid plant in flowerpot
- Bright window for lighting
- Table
- Camera capable of manual exposure override
- Cable release or hands-free self-timer
- Tripod
- Black fabric with velvet or plush nap
- White cardboad or foam board at least 18" x 18"
- Look for a good location. Find a lot of bright, natural sunlight, but avoid letting the light fall directly onto the plant. We chose a room with a large picture window that faces west and lets the afternoon sunlight stream in.
- Hang (or tape) a piece of black fabric on the wall. We purchased this at our local Joanne Fabric store. It's called Black Soft Cozy and is a very affordable $4.95 per yard.
- Place the plant on a tray table, the kind you eat your pizza on when you're watching television. If that's too low for comfortable shooting, put a sturdy box on the tray table and place the plant atop that.
- Position the plant several feet in front of the background and roughly perpendicular to the window.
- Rotate the flowerpot to find the best angle that accentuates the texture of the white petals.
- Use a bounce card to reflect light onto the far side of the plant and the underside, if necessary.
- With your camera on a sturdy tripod, compose and shoot.
- Bring the image into your favorite editing software. Fade the stem into black, remove any sticks and plastic clamps supporting the plant. Increase the canvas size so the orchid isn't right up against the edges of the frame. Finally, use a level adjustment and move the left slider in a bit to make sure everything that's supposed to be black really is.
Finishing the Print
All of our prints are matted and framed using the highest-quality, museum-grade, acid-free materials. We'll be doing a separate blog entry about matting and framing. We print this particular image on Epson Premium Luster paper (even though we don't use Epson printers). This paper has a slightly textured, lustrous pearl finish that produces a deep, rich black. This image simply doesn't work if the background is not a deep, solid black.
We've made prints as large as 20 x 30 inches, and mount them behind a double-thick 8-ply white 100% cotton Crescent Museum Solids rag mat (white #2238). It all gets placed in a plain black 30 x 40 inch wood frame with Tru Vue Reflection Control glass or acrylic. That means the mat border on all sides is a healthy five inches. When you use a wide mat border with an 8-ply mat, your prints magically transform into gallery-like works of art.
If you go for a more modest 12 x 18 inch print on 13 x 19 paper, we recommend a four-inch mat border on all sides, resulting in a frame size of 20 x 26 inches. Alternatively, you could drop the mat border to three inches on all four sides, resulting in a standard-size 18 x 24 inch frame, but the impact just isn't the same.
Now it's your turn. Go out and make a great image!
