Indoor Macro Photography Project For Rainy Days

I mentioned yesterday that I got outside with my macro lens and shot some photos of the miniature daffodils in the backyard. Today I wanted to do some more, but it was raining outside and I didn't feel like dealing with the water. So instead of going outside to take photos, I brought outside in with me.

I remembered an article a while ago at the Digital Photography School called Photographing Autumn Leaves – DIY Studio. I hadn't tried it yet, so I thought today was a good opportunity. But instead of autumn leaves, I used spring blooms. I grabbed a few specimens of blooms from various sources and headed back inside to get my studio set up.

After cleaning both sides of a window, I taped my subjects to the glass and set up the tripod. I left the tripod legs at their shortest so I could get close to the window with my macro lens — actually, it was a sliding glass door so I could use the glass all the way down to the floor. We have some pine trees about 20 feet outside of the door, so they would provide a nice green backdrop for my shots.

I took about 60 shots by varying my angles and running through a bunch of different apertures. Why not? I was inside with my camera on a tripod and my subjects weren't going anywhere! I ended up getting about 5 or 6 shots that I could really work with.

The photo below is one of the ones I processed today. I like it because of the colors and the back-lighting, which make the specimen somewhat translucent. It looks as if it were taken on a sunny day outdoors, but I assure you that it was done on a dark rainy day just as I described above. I also used an overlay blend with a Gaussian blur to give it a softer and more surreal look.

Photo of the Day…

Photo by Brian Auer
04/01/07 Flemington, NJ
Red Tree Blooms
Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D
Sigma MACRO 105mm f/2.8 EX DG
Kenko 25mm Extension Tube
158mm equiv * f/32 * 30s * ISO100