I’m not much of a flower photographer and never really have been.  I only seem to photograph flowers when there is something that really intrigues me about them.  This flower is called an Angel Trumpet, and it was in the process of opening.  The flower looks nothing like this when it is completely open, but I was simply intrigued by the lines in this scene.  This is also another experiment with extension tubes rather than a 1:1 macro lens.  This photograph was made with my Canon 20D using a 12mm extension tube on a 50mm lens at f/1.4.  The depth of field using that combination is extremely shallow.  At first glances, one might think this image used a soft focus filter, but it’s not the case.  That’s just an effect of the wide aperture and the extension tube.  I cropped this image to a square to eliminate the empty space on the right and left, but the image is full frame from top to bottom.  This is a rather large bloom.  The actual size of this bloom is approximately 3″ across. 

This photo of a lily is also another example using the 50mm f/1.4 lens with the 12mm extension tube.  I got the same soft glow effect here.  I like the effect, but I probably need to try some different experiments at smaller apertures to mimic the results of the average 100mm macro lenses.  I also need to find out how close to 1:1 I can get with a stack of extension tubes.  My set includes 12mm, 20mm, and 36mm tubes that can be stacked.  I haven’t done much experimentation with stacking them yet.  The 12mm tube has allowed me to achieve my goals so far.

I love orchids.  This photo was shot in a tabletop studio environment and lit with two flash units, one bouncing off the ceiling above and another lower powered strobe bouncing in from the left side to light the stem. 

There are a lot of people in my Camera Club who spend a lot of time photographing flowers.  I think this is primarily why I don’t do it as much.  Maybe I have just seen so many of them that I have a hard time finding the inspiration to shoot them myself :)

Art Photography