Other Rooms, Other Subjects, Other Light
etting close indoors doesn’t have to be limited to the kitchen. Pay attention to the light in other areas, which might in some other way be interesting. Do you have a shag rug? Consider looking at it as you would your front lawn. Instead of finding dew-covered blades of grass, you might find a ketchup-laced piece of carpet. How about a close-up of the Venetian blinds or a crystal vase or some of those often-seen “faces” that appear in many linoleum tiles? And, of course, there are always those wonderful still lifes of your kids’ broken yet colorful crayons, along with the Slinky, especially when in its half-circle position. Take any number of these objects and place them on a small table. If you have some windows in the house that provide diffused light and others that let in direct light, you’ll quickly see how both lighting conditions offer up their own special qualities, either softening the image (diffused light) or creating bold contrast (frontlight or sidelight).
If you choose use an ordinary house lamp (tungsten light) as your light source for close-ups, set your white balance (WB) to Tungsten to record daylight images without the ordinary yellow/orange cast that’s often the result of shooting under tungsten light. If you feel compelled to shoot with a flash, do not attempt close-up shots with an ordinary on-camera flash; rather, you must resort to the use of a ring flash (see here). However, due to the often metallic, glossy, or semi-matte finish that so many household products possess, I would not recommend the use of flash, simply because it’s quite difficult to avoid the sheen that often records on the subject from the flash itself.
If nothing else, this image is definitive proof that it doesn’t take much more than a nearby window to create a compelling composition of a red rose, and again, all without the delays and frustrations often caused by the wind. I positioned this long-stem red rose standing in vase near a window in a rear storage room of our apartment. (And, just a side note: It’s also where our cat chooses to spend a great deal of his time.) With my camera mounted on tripod, I chose a viewpoint that would find me shooting straight down on the rose, close enough to fill the entire frame. Since depth of field was a concern (I wanted to get sharpness from the top petals down into the folds), I set my aperture to f/22 and then adjusted the shutter speed until 1/8 sec. indicated a correct exposure. I then set the camera’s self-timer delay to 5 seconds, and 5 seconds after tripping the shutter release, the exposure was made. A simple shot for sure, but no doubt a rose of lasting beauty.
105mm lens, f/22 for 1/8 sec.
Although I’ve been shooting for more than thirty years, I never seem to tire of photographing flowers; however, I will confess that I’m finding it far more challenging today, if only because I would prefer to create fresh compositions that set my flower shots apart from the masses. I’m not always successful, but when I feel I have come up with something new, I’m quick to share it. Just recently, I bought a dozen bright orange tulips at the outdoor market, and once they began to open up and bloom, I tore each petal off each stem. Before long I had several stacks of petals spread out on white poster board. The multiple curvilinear lines of these stacked petals presented the opportunity to shoot a macro shot that would be steeped in sensual feelings, since it is the same curvilinear line that is reminiscent of the human form.
With my Nikon D300 camera and Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens mounted on my tripod, I focused as close as my lens would allow, which, in this case, took me beyond life size due to the camera’s 1.5X multiplier that compensates for the smaller image area than what’s found with a 35mm film camera. Before setting my exposure, I wanted to add some fill light to the scene, and one of the reasons I chose to place the flower petals on white board is because white is highly reflective. With the addition of a second piece of white poster board propped up at an angle of about 60 degrees right next to the first one, I was able to throw the reflected light coming off of the bottom board back onto the awaiting petals. I chose an aperture of f/32 (to cover every nook and cranny with sharpness) and simply adjusted the shutter speed until the camera’s meter indicated 1/2 sec. for the correct exposure. Due to this really slow shutter speed, I engaged the camera’s mirror lock-up feature and set the camera’s self-timer to fire 5 seconds later after tripping the shutter release. The composition, to some, looks like an orange rose or a camellia but, as you now know, is nothing more than a “manufactured” shot of stacked tulip petals.
Nikon D300, Micro-Nikkor 105mm lens, f/32 for 1/2 sec.