To capture close up’s of flowers, I used the following equipment:
tripod, extension tubes and speedlight. I put the extension tubes on the
20-120ft lense and turned off the VR and manual focused because I was using the
D90 on the tripod. I also used Live View to zoom in to get better focus. The
SB-700 was used to place light on the subject at different angles by hand
holding it. To create the water droplets, I used a spray bottle that I had
filled with water.
The camera was put into manual mode with a shutter speed of 1/200 and
an aperture of f11 with an ISO of 500. The exposure compensation was the
setting I adjusted often and it ranged from 0 to -5. I wanted to create a dark
background to make the lily stand out and using the speed light with these
settings, allowed me to do that. The RAW files from the camera were imported
into ViewNX.
Once in ViewNX, I adjusted the white balance to either flash or left it
has standard. The picture control was changed to Nature-Landscape and I also
adjusted highlight/shadow protection sliders. To fine tune the exposure, I
tweaked the exposure compensation as well.
PS Elements 11 was used to clone out unwanted imperfections on the
flower petals that show up in close up photography. To create different
backgrounds, I used texture files that I have downloaded in the past. I used
texture’s that had nice bokeh and adjusted the blend mode on the texture layer
to get a look that I liked. I then used the brush tool on the layer to paint
over areas that I didn’t want the texture showing through. I used the sharpening
tool to adjust sharpness on certain parts of the flower and then used the high
pass sharpen filter as well as my last step of post processing.
My favorite image of the tiger lilies is where I took a dark texture
with nice bokeh that also has a darker border and put it behind the lily that
had water drop lets placed on it. The angle of the speed light on the lily
really makes this image stand out.
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