I wanted to shoot something this weekend but I really couldn’t be bothered to go outside – how lazy is that!

If fairness the weather was horrid, it had been raining all weekend and while you can get some great shots in the rain, you tend to get wet.  And I didn’t fancy that.  So I had to decided on an indoor subject.  James went to his high school dance and got all dressed up in a suit and I nearly posted a picture of him.  But he doesn’t really like being on the blog so being the respectful Dad that I am I decided to do something else.

I hadn’t shot any flowers in a while so Abi and I went out to see what we could find.  We went to QFC and saw some Gerbera’s that had great colors.  So we brought those and got home to take some shots.

This really is one of the simplest things to shoot.  I have a small reflector that has a black cover so it can be used as a flag and put that on a light stand in the kitchen.  Then I put a single speed light in a small soft box in front of the flower and grabbed the camera.

I took lots of pictures from all angles.  As the flower was quite a long way from the black reflector, that never got any light and appeared SUPER black.  I tried multiple apertures and ended up liking a shot at f/16.  As I was pretty close to the flower the smaller aperture ensured a wider depth of focus and the flower just looked better.

I shot the flower in the middle of the frame showing all its petals and off to one side.  In the end I liked this shot where some of the flower was cut off, this was also Lisa’s favorite so it’s the one I’m posting tonight.