Lit Up

I took this photo during yesterdays still life photo shoot. This is my favourite photo of the day; I was experimenting with some flash gun techniques that I had thought of in previous still life photo shoots. I tried different flash gun powers from various angles until I created the effect that I wanted.

For this photo I still had the camera on the tripod but I had the camera set up behind and underneath the flowers; so the light would spread around on the underside of the flowers. I had the camera in manual mode so that none of the settings would change as I was taking the photos. For this one I had an aperture of F16 and a shutter speed of 30 seconds at an ISO 100. I tried many flash powers and I found that a power of 1/64 - 2/3 of the maximum power gave the best exposure. With any more power, the flowers start to white out, and with any lower power then the effect didn’t look as good. I had the lens set at a focal length of 55mm to get the right field of view.

To edit the photo I cropped the photo slightly to remove some distractions on the right hand side of the frame. I also increased the contrast to make the photo look more dynamic. I didn’t need to sharpen the photo because it was taken on ISO 100 so therefore the quality was already as high as it could be.

I’m very pleased with how this photo came out; it’s one of my favourite photos that I have taken. I’ve still got a few more photos that I can upload, which I’m sure I will over the next few days.

Mat