
This is my image of the month for September 2020. A message in a bottle. I am currently experimenting with a bolder oil painting style to try and achieve an image which is an oil and light hybrid.
John Gough Photography
by John Gough
This is my image of the month for September 2020. A message in a bottle. I am currently experimenting with a bolder oil painting style to try and achieve an image which is an oil and light hybrid.
by John Gough
I like to shoot flowers backlit. Like the buttercups in the image above. This was achieved using natural light through a window lightbox.
Now that we are all restricted from roaming around with our camera, the spring flowers in our gardens make fascinating subjects. With a little post-processing in Lightroom and Photoshop, simple blooms can blossom into fine art.
Over the next few blogs, I will be explaining just how I approach flower photography, starting with how to build a simple window lightbox.
The simplest way to create a uniform lighting effect is to simply stick a piece of tracing paper or baking parchment on a window. Mount, the flower in front of it and take a photograph. Job done.
I use oasis to mount the flower, which can be purchased from Amazon.
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As my flower photography has evolved I have created a more elaborate window lighting setup, but it still uses natural light.
As I will explain in a later episode. Cutting the flower from its background in Photoshop is best achieved with as white a background as possible. So I now use a white diffusion fabric which I clip to a window using studio clips.
Both items can be bought quite cheaply from a photography store or Amazon.
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I usually pick flowers from my garden, or purchase them from a florist. I certainly avoid picking flowers from the wild. Bringing flowers indoors and photographing in a ‘studio’ environment gives ultimate control over the image.
Over the next few weeks I will be working through the process I use to create fine art flower images. This is episode 1.
I have avoided dropping my camera so many times using a simple inexpensive wrist strap like this one. Cameras and expensive lenses do not bounce!
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