John,
Those shots are simply stunning. To have one extra 'model' pose for you is
wonderful, to have two is amazing. Both are show winners for sure.
Tom
> A few days after the New Year, I went to a friend's home to show he and
his
> wife the basics of making macro-photographs of flowers. He has a studio
> out of which he does weddings and portraiture, but he had never this type
> of "still life" before. Mostly, his wife wants to do some artistic
> work. The benefit was being able to play with his studio lights again and
> I struck a deal that whatever I shot could be used in exhibition. :-)
>
> Took the OM-1n which still had a half-roll of Portra 400NC in it (would
> have liked to use 160NC but didn't have any), the extension tubes, and the
> 50/1.4, 85/2, 135/2.8 and 200/4 lenses. Turn out the flower his wife
> wanted to photograph is and amaryllis in full bloom. These was not the
> small house plant I was expecting; it stands almost 3 feet tall! [My
other
> half's idea of house plants are African violets.]
>
> Rearranged his lighting from a "cross" setup with fill using three strobes
> to a single strobe for a couple shots using "loop" and then changed it to
> "Rembrandt" for a little more contrast. There was enough "bounce" from
the
> walls and ceiling that fill wasn't needed. Set up the tripod with an
> extension tube on the 85/2 and got a frame-filling photograph of one
> blossom on her amaryllis with the "Rembrandt" setup:
> http://johnlind.tripod.com/amaryllis03b.jpg
>
> Then came the unexpected . . .
>
> I had the camera off the tripod to move it again for a different
> perspective from a greater distance. One of their cats showed up in the
> studio to investigate what was going on. Quickly pushed the tripod out of
> the way and managed to get three shots of the cat before he decided he had
> seen enough. Got this grab shot of the cat [color balance and print
> exposure is off making working with the scan difficult; it needs to be
> reprinted]:
> http://johnlind.tripod.com/amaryllis01b.jpg
>
> A few minutes later, their 18 mo. old son escapes the room he's been
penned
> into and he wanders in. I didn't know this beforehand, but his mother has
> been teaching him to sniff flowers. He even does this now with pictures
of
> flowers! This enormous amaryllis is sitting on a short pedastal and the
> blossom was just about his height. You guessed it; he wants to sniff the
> flower and manages a good whiff about the time his mother gets hold of him
> at the belt line to keep him from grabbing at the plant. Before he
managed
> to rip a part of a large petal off, I managed to get one more shot:
> http://johnlind.tripod.com/amaryllis02a.jpg
>
> At that point we declared a "break" for our model and allowed the plant to
> return to its table in their kitchen.
>
> The first one is a decent photograph, but you can bet I will use the
second
> (if it can be printed properly) and definitely the third one for
> exhibition. Sometimes it's the unexpected that creates the best ones!!
>
> -- John
>
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