Backlight Painting

[Loose Canon]

I’m not really a flower shooter. And if time permits and I can get some bloomers I’m going to reconfirm why!

But I’ve seen a discussion or two here about shooting flowers and lighting regarding said. Since I’m always interested in lighting I thought I might ought to have a go at some lighting ideas. Namely in this case, back-lighting flowers.

So one of the first things I wanted to do was a light paint and see how that played.

For this shot I set two diffusion panels. They were very inexpensive foam squares (12” square x 1/8” thich) available at craft stores. I wanted to mention this because this is a very fun low budget shoot. They were dead close and at 90* from each other set askew with the corner of this 90* set at about 45* from dead on if that makes any sense. Rather than paint the flower directly I painted the screens from behind. I have never seen anything like this written about so I was kind of shooting from the hip here! Lots of cool possibilities here. From behind, bouncing, fun stuff!

Anyway, I’ll break it down:

f/22
2 second shutter
ISO 100
100mm Macro
Dark Studio (Which means I tripped over everything in between shots!)
One shot, one frame.

The light source was a Mini-Mag hand-held flashlight (um, hand torch for my overseas Friends) that is somewhat adjustable and focusable. And they too are relatively inexpensive which went with my low-budget approach for this shot.

It took a lot of shots to get what I wanted as an effective painting technique for the subject.

[JBW]

you are way past my pay grade but what could you do if you backed off a bit and included the whole bloom on a dark background?

[bnnrcn]

Hi Terry, I like the flower and composition but I think the lighting you mentioned above and the darkness of the studio gave the image a kind of muddy/dirty look.I'm not a flower shooter either but I like the lively look of the backlit flowers and may be that's why I don't feel comfortable with the image. Thanks for sharing your technique, I always learn from your images and your comments

[IzzieK]

I love it, Terry...the effect is excellent. Have you hang the flower by the stem so you can shoot from underneath it? Just thinking out loud...

[Shadowman]

Nice concept, I wonder if you could get similar effect if you placed flower on scanner bed? The light would be coming from below but the angle of your camera would add to the effect. You might even get an interesting image from the scan as well.

[Loose Canon]

you are way past my pay grade but what could you do if you backed off a bit and included the whole bloom on a dark background?

Well Brian, my pay grade is exactly zero and I really didn’t think you could make less than that! I’m guessing I could do the same type of thing only with a wider field of view. Except for that lighting by painting you can’t get exactly the same results every time. Well, at least I can’t. I can get pretty close to repeatable results though. Thanks for your thoughts Brian.

Hi Terry, I like the flower and composition but I think the lighting you mentioned above and the darkness of the studio gave the image a kind of muddy/dirty look. I'm not a flower shooter either but I like the lively look of the backlit flowers and may be that's why I don't feel comfortable with the image.

Hi Binnur! Thank you for commenting. Funny you should mention that. First thing I wanted to do was get something a little more dramatic-like before I moved on to what you are suggesting. To be honest, I didn’t really think I would enjoy shooting this subject and I probably wouldn’t shooting them in situ. But I found this particular session rather enjoyable!

I’m not sure if this particular bloom is really a good candidate for this Binnur. Its what I have on hand though! I thought I might go for a more lively look later using different techniques.

Have you hang the flower by the stem so you can shoot from underneath it? Just thinking out loud...

Thank you Izzie. No, I haven’t tried that.

I wonder if you could get similar effect if you placed flower on scanner bed? The light would be coming from below but the angle of your camera would add to the effect. You might even get an interesting image from the scan as well.

I’m not sure John. If I had to guess I would have to say that you couldn’t get the same effect because the scanner would pass even, consistent light under the flower. I would say that hitting it with flash would be a closer comparison than painting. Sure something to think about though.

The reason I went with this technique is because I could control the intensity of the light hitting different areas of the flower. When I was trying to decide what I wanted out of the shot I thought I wanted the backlighting to more or less appear as if it emanated from the center of the flower and fall off as it reached the petals. I also wanted the stamen (? I’m not a flower guy!) as much in silhouette as possible. Some problems I encountered is that is was very easy to blow out the petals, especially toward the outer edges where they can get wafer thin. That will be an issue with flash.

I set the focus for the petals rather than the stamen, which I think might have been okay for this shot because they are more in silhouette, but maybe not so much for a different lighting scenario where the stamen is more visible. Focus stacking was out of the question with this one because I didn’t want to go to the trouble. It was more about the backlighting than DoF.

I appreciate the kickback guys. Great suggestions for the next session (if there is one)!

[Ziggy]

Way above what I do.

I like what you have captured, nice work.

[KimC]

Beautiful image...

[Loose Canon]

Thank you Jim.

Thank you for having a peek Kim.

I appreciate it.