Flower Macro With Backlighting
Hey there,
this is a German post by Tina, that I (Kate) will only translate for you 
Enjoy this photographic tutorial showing you how to use backlighting and little equipment for a flower macro.
“I bought some fresh buttercups at the local market and had to capture then in pixels. So I put them in a vase as soon as I got home and chose a slightly opened blossom to arrange it away from the others.
I put the flow in a simple glass – it doesn’t matter what that looks like as it won’t be visible in the images. Then I positioned the glass in front on the sideboard in our living room with the window behind it. This way the window can be used as backlight and will create a white background if you overexpose the photo.
I worked with little equipment. The 60mm Makro was attached to the camera which stood on a Gorillapod tripod. That’t it. Ah, and of course a spraying bottle with water for the water drops on the flow which make the photo look more interesting
And this it what it looked like:
Camera settings:
- focal length: 60mm
- ISO 100
- aperture: f/7,1
- shutter speed: 1,3 Sek.
Play around with the position of the light and if you like with aperture and shutter speed. When photographing a flower at home there is no time limit Use the opportunity to play around
After photographing it, I loaded the image in Lightroom 3 and edited it a little bit.
This is the out-of-cam original:
At first, I adjusted the lens correction to fit the used lens. To make the blossom glow a bit more orange I made the image slightly darker using “exposure” and intensified the orange tones. The final adjustments were clarity and sharpness.
And this it what the result looked like:
In my case there was a bit of the wall visible in the photo. I couldn’t choose another position for the flower, but due to the overexposure nearly all of the wall was white, only two stripes were left to correct. I had to correct this in Photoshop.
I opened the pre-processed photo out of Lightroom using right mouse button – edit in – Adobe Photoshop CS5. Using the stamp tool (S) I used some of the white areas as a source for the darker stripes.
As the stripes are hard to see, I used the magic wand tool as a little helper. I chose the dark color with a bit of tolerance as a guide line where to correct.
If you didn’t choose the perfect position for the flower you can choose to crop the image. I decided on a square crop for my photos. I hope you like the result:
If you would rather get a black background, you can use a black cardboard for the photo. Just position it behind the blossom.
If you want to save the time for the photoshop retouch, you can attach a white cardboard behind the flower at the wall. This would save you the trouble getting rid of the black stripes.
I got some more photos from the flower macro shooting, which you can find at my blog.”
