This is a subsequent photo of the bouquet of roses, with the buds a bit more open, and angled from above rather then showing the full bouquet in profile. As compared with the first photo, I also lit the flowers for more softness of color.
This is one of those photos that appears fairly effortless. As indeed it should. But in fact, the image took a great deal of work.
The most difficult problem was caused by an issue of lens focal length. I wanted to be able to see the entire circumference of the bouquet of roses; at the same time I didn’t want the photo to capture tripod legs, lighting apparatus, or the edge of the black velvet background. With my tripod fully extended (three legs plus center column), approximately 40mm (60mm in 35mm terms) would have done the trick.
This would seem to have indicated my Nikon 18-200mm VR zoom lens, which I enjoy using as an all-round lens, and certainly includes the desired focal length in its range. Unfortunately, however, when you point this lens straight down, the zoom “slips” out to its longest setting, so I couldn’t use the lens for this purpose.
I ended up raising the height of the tripod by putting each foot on a chair and climbing a short ladder myself. With a little cropping in the post-processing, my 50mm Sigma macro lens (75mm in 35mm terms) was now just right.
This whole setup was truly pretty jerry-rigged and rickety, and not at all the kind of slick shooting situation you’d expect of a pro photographer. You can see a somewhat similar set of circumstances that involved a diaper box as a platform when I photographed this wasp. In both cases, the point is that it worked, and that I didn’t break my keister, not the slickness of the setup.
So that the white roses didn’t blow out, and the orange and pink roses on the left remained vivid, I combined three different exposures to get the final result.
[Nikon D300, Sigma 50mm f/2.8 macro lens (75mm in 35mm terms), three exposures (1.6 second, 2.5 seconds, and 4 seconds), all at f/32 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.]
