Milkweed pods

[DanK]

Over the past few years I have spent some time photographing the dessicated flowers and seeds that are abundant here in autumn and winter. Lately I have done a few milkweed pods. I bring these inside to shoot for two reasons: they are disturbed the the slightest breeze, and anything but a very smooth background is distracting when the detail is so fine. Here are three recent ones. C&C welcome.

[Brownbear]

Amazing images... gorgeous detail and light, exquisite.

[Manfred M]

Great shots Dan! I particuarly like the last one that shows the delicate details of the milkweed seeds and their parachutes.

[Mike Buckley]

Such a gorgeous set, though the last one takes all of the top honors. It looks like a stop-action shot of a ballet of milkweed pods that is reminiscent of a dance of whirling dervishes.

[Suzan J]

Hi Dan: These shots really pop against the black background. Now that winter is approaching, I want to take on a new challenge of photographing flowers indoors. I have no experience at all. Your shots are exactly what I would like to achieve. Can you please, please, tell me what your technique is? What did you use for a background and what type of lighting is involved?

[DanK]

Thanks, everyone. Suzan, here is my most common setup:



The lights are inexpensive "hair lights" (small boom lights), with halogen floods in them. For diffusion, I now use baking parchment paper. As you can see, I sometimes use an umbrella for diffuse light, although I now usually use a reflective silver one rather than the white shoot-through in the photo. The background is a black fleece vest I found at REI. You have to keep the background far back or avoid shining light directly on it. Otherwise, you have to select the background by color and turn it black to get rid of traces of mottled gray. (I had to do that with the top one of these.) I do focus-stacking with almost all of my indoor flowers, using Zerene. For most flowers, I use the DMap algorithm, which does a better job of preserving colors and textures. When there is a lot of fine detail or substantial haloing from parallax (when one object is far in front of the one behind it), I may use PMax, which has less haloing and preserves fine detail better. I will often out Zerene's retouching tool to remove haloing artifacts, but that was essentially impossible in these because of the tiny threads, so I used PMax. I shoot only raw and take a white balance shot before each sequence to be stacked. (You can see a whiBal card on the table).

I often use a wimberley plamp (as in the photo) to hold the flowers. The random stack of stuff on the table was from an earlier shot where I propped up a vase on them. Usually, you can frame the shot so that the plamp does not show, but not always. For the second one in this sequence, I used wax to hold the pod to a plastic knife and then used the plamp to hold the knife. The wax I used I found posed on the web--it's a roughly half-and-half mixture of beeswax and the wax from a toilet bowl seal.

Dan

[Mike Buckley]

Where's the glass of wine in your setup to help the photography process along?

Other materials that can be used to hold the flower in place, so long as the stem is rigid enough that it will remain vertical: modeling clay or foam, both available at craft stores.

[DanK]

Where's the glass of wine in your setup to help the photography process along?

Probably on the desk, behind me

Other materials that can be used to hold the flower in place, so long as the stem is rigid enough that it will remain vertical: modeling clay or foam, both available at craft stores.

Very good suggestions. In fact, I had been meaning for some time to get myself a block of florist's foam and just discovered that we actually had an old block of it. It is a very peculiar foam--very rigid, but easy to puncture (if you stick a flower into it), and it often comes with holes already in it.

[FootLoose]

Beautiful shots, Dan. The energy in the 3rd one reminds me of New Years' Eve at the opera house. ie fireworks in the black sky.

[Stagecoach]

Dan,

Very nice series, thanks for sharing.

Good to see I'm not the only one who has to use a bit of imagination when selecting props to get your subject to the right height, I have now got a good set of plastic Tupperware containers to assist with this

Grahame

[John 2]

Not my favourite subjects but that is quality photography. Nice shots.

[pnodrog]

Like the photographs and I also prefer the third one. Really appreciate you showing us your setup.

[Suzan J]

Thanks Dan for the detailed explanation. The picture really helps me understand the setup. I do have a decent macro lens and focus stacking is also on my "learn to do list". This will make a good cold weather project for me. I will also take note of Mike's suggestion and add the wine glass to the list of essential equipment.

[pnodrog]

Thanks Dan for the detailed explanation. The picture really helps me understand the setup. I do have a decent macro lens and focus stacking is also on my "learn to do list". This will make a good cold weather project for me. I will also take note of Mike's suggestion and add the wine glass to the list of essential equipment.

Just a small point that may save you money a wine glass is not essential as with very little practice you can drink directly from the bottle. Anyway Mike ends up breaking a lot of his.

[Mike Buckley]

I hope Suzan has firmly grasped the importance of L. Paul's suggestion. Whereas I mentioned a "glass of wine," she mentioned a "wine glass." Note to Suzan: a wine glass does not necessarily have anything in it, much less wine. If you follow L. Paul's suggestion, you can simply dispense with any need for a glass and go directly to the wine.

L. Paul also mentioned something that I have not thought about -- that though I have broken numerous wine glasses, I have never broken a wine bottle. Perhaps I should attend to that oversight.