How to: photographing flowers

Nadia Winzenried

In this image some of the lights illuminating the white tulips were used with blue filters.


The main light on the “main flower” (the only flower which you see inside) is a picolite with a Fresnel spot attachment without a coloured filter in front of it. This small and hard light emphasises the yellow anther and its structure.

A backlight from the right side (a P-70 with honeycomb grid) with blue filter, is reflecting on the green leaves and shining through the white and thin tulips petals. A light from the left (a P-70 with a narrow honeycomb grid) casts white reflections in order to not only have blue colour on the flowers, leaves and stalks.

The Litepipe (also with a blue filter) from above is creating a general soft backlight.

As a result we have a mixture between blueish and neutral light, the balance between how much blue and how much white is of course a matter of taste.

The image has been taken with a medium format camera and a focal length of 120mm. The exposure time was 1/125s and the aperture f/11, with ISO 100.