Merry Christmas Cactus Everyone!

WernerG

black mamba

Nice shot, Werner. Good composition. I love the colors.

Tom

WernerG

Thanks Tom, I was blown away by the flower shots posted here recently and decided that it was time to take flower shooting more seriously. Just sticking the camera into the bed of flowers and pressing the shutter doesn't cut it anymore. This shot is really step 1. I used a white tee shirt to soften the incoming sunlight and that produced the nice colors but there is no variation in luminosity. The next step is to buy a external flash and a photographer's umbrella to provide some soft directional light. I did a test using my camera's built-in flash, redirecting the flash with taped on white cardboard to a large sheet of white poster paper and then back to a flower. A real jury rig but I got a nice gradation of tones within the flower. I have at least 4 more months to practice on our house plants before the real flowers show up.

Any suggestions on how to do this kind of photography would be appreciated.

Dogdots

Beautiful work .. the detail is just wonderful.

Panther

Howdy Werner,

Beautiful Shot, love the colors.

I grew up with always having Christmas Cactus' around
during Christmas.

Very nicely done.