Flowers

Everyone I think starts taking pictures of flowers. They are easy to make look good and in the summer readily available subjects that don't move very quickly!

This is a photo of an Evelyn's rose from my mother's garden. She takes great pride in her garden and it grows from year to year. Being back at my parent's after finishing my Masters' has really blown me away how much is has grown since I was last here.

For this photo I took it at noon, on a cloudless day, so everything was coming out blown out and way too contrasty. To fix this, I grabbed a reflective umbrella, put it on a lightstand and used it to block the sun, now I had the flower in the shade. I then grabbed a firefly beauty box (a new light modifier I have been having fun with recently) and put it just outside the frame. I got this very nice light with it.

It was shot at f/16so I could get the shutter speed low enough to sync with the flash. Despite every one on any internet form warning to never go above f/8 or "you will get soft photos from diffraction!", I think it came out alright.

How do you take photos of flowers?