There are times when the best studio setup is no studio at all. What I mean by this is that there are times when you don’t need a room full of fancy lighting equipment and backgrounds. Sometimes the best light is the one that is shining overhead most every day. Shooting flowers such as the tulips I photographed this past weekend is a perfect example of simplicity and natural light. So here was my actual setup. One pot of Tulips, a Westcott diffusion panel, and one window with slightly overcast sun coming in from a southerly direction. Ideally, I should use a North facing window for even softer light but the slight overcast was pretty darn good at the time. Other equipment included a Nikon D80, a 24-120 lens, a tripod, and a close-up filter. The white diffusion panel was placed directly in the window and then the flowers were placed in front of that. I shot directly towards the window with an over-exposed setting (about 1 and 1/2 stops), which provided a completely white background. If I had not over-exposed, I would have had mostly silhouetted flowers.
To mix things up, I brought up a black background and put it at a 90° angle to the window. I then shot towards the black background with the diffusion panel still in front of the window. But this time, it was providing a soft side-light for the flowers.
As you can see, it wasn’t a complicated setup but the results were studio quality. You don’t even need the diffusion panel. You could do the same thing with a thin white sheet. So the next time you have some fresh-cut flowers around, find yourself a window, pull the sheet off the bed, and start shooting some floral still-lifes. You may just start buying flowers for yourself.
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Particularly like the middle shot. Thanks for sharing the setup.