In the pre-dawn cool I walked around the house and down to our dahlia bed in the side yard. There was one perfect white blossom. I cropped it, and placed it in a vase, ready for its turn as a star in front of my camera after breakfast. I tried the traditional poses, and laid it flat on the light box, but when all is said and done this somewhat unconventional side view of petals works best for me.

Perfect Dahlia Day © Harold Davis

Dahlias are, of course, a favorite flower of mine to photograph. Click here for more.

Phyllis brought a Phalaenopsis (“moth orchid”) home for a short visit to our sunny living room. Leaving the orchid in its decorative pot, I photographed the blossoms using a vertical light box setup (image below).

This genus of orchid was first brought to Europe in the mid-nineteenth century and collected by the Victorians. Today, it is widely sold for decorative purposes throughout the world because of its ease of propagation and cultivation. While the range of the genus in the wild includes Java and Australia, it probably originated in the Philippines (the tag on the Phalaenopsis that I photographed indicates that my specimen was grown in Salinas, California).

Orchid © Harold Davis

Next, I photographed a single flower up close and personal using my macro probe lens (below). Corn Poppy is another example of an image that uses this lens for a floral close-up.

The orchid close-up is actually a composite, with the lower half exposed using the ring light built into the lens, and the upper half exposed using ambient backlighting. With the camera firmly held in place on a sturdy tripod, the composition of the two images stayed the same despite the different lighting. I combined the two different images using a simple layer mask and gradient in Photoshop.

Phalaenopsis © Harold Davis

I cut a stalk of Campanulas (“Canterbury Bells”) from the garden. I laid the bunch gently on my light box for a sequence of high-key captures (below).

Campanula (Canterbury Bells) © Harold Davis

Often, photography of flowers on a light box destroys my models, and this makes me sad. However, in this case the Campanulas were completely intact following photography. So I placed them in a cut crystal vase, and brought them upstairs to enjoy.

It seemed to me that the flowers were pretty special in the vase, but how to capture them? The answer was to use two light boxes, arranged perpendicularly to each other—as in this Light Box Photography in Three Dimensions tutorial video (post-production for a three-dimensional light box image is shown in the follow-up video here).

My Campanulas in a Vase image is shown below following post-production.

Campanulas in a Vase © Harold Davis

I’ve been experimenting with creating images that look a little like a wall of flowers one might see at a florist shop. From a set design viewpoint, an important challenge is how to establish multiple vertical “levels”—because a single row is basically boring, and not a good way to create a three-dimensional wall.

Florista (on white) © Harold Davis

With the version on black (below), I dealt with this issue by adding supports behind the black velvet background. I think this works pretty well, but if you consider the image there is a certain “I’m floating in air” aspect to the composition.

Florista (on black) © Harold Davis

I like the version on a white seamless background best (top). With this setup, I decided to try a “form follows function” approach, and use visible supports to raise the height of some of the individual floral arrangements. To achieve this, I used spine-side-out books, notably the large collection of New Yorker cartoons shown on the right side (Charles Dickens and Mel Brooks are somewhat hidden in the background).

As an archetype, “James Bond” is deeply embedded for better and worse somewhere not far below the surface of cis-Males of my generation. But what if James Bond had liked flowers more than guns, gadgets, fast women, and cars? From that viewpoint, when faced with the challenges of recuperation, a light box, and a mass of tulips, I can only say, “Too many tulips are not enough!”

Too Many Tulips Are Not Enough © Harold Davis