Fulfilling a Promise

Two posts in one day - Wow!  Unheard of right?  Well, one of my friends (you know who you are) went to my blog and read ALL of my posts in one sitting.  Whoa!  Anyway, she texted me and asked me to please fulfill my promise in an earlier post.  I had posted about a trip to Smokey Mountain National Park and photographing wildflowers.

In that post I promised to share how I overcame the issue of shooting wildflowers with my macro lens and reducing the movement from wind.  Anyone who photographs anything with a macro lens outside knows that the slightest breeze can throw your image out of focus.  I guess I just forgot all about that (insert blush here).  So, to rectify that blunder, I went back into my archives, found my images and am fulfilling my promise that I made all those posts ago.

So, here you go - if you want to read the first blog post it was posted on April 26, 2016 (yes, I know, 2 whole years ago) and is titled Finding Still Life In Nature.

Anyway, when I photograph wildflowers (or any flowers really) outside, it is ridiculous how much they can move with just a slight breeze.  Even if you don’t feel a breeze the flowers are moving.  So, knowing that I was going to the Smokies specifically to shoot wildflowers I tried to come up with solutions to problems I had in the past, one of them being the flowers moving.

I solved this problem by purchasing a small product tent - this is just a white mylar (I think) covered square box that diffuses light and you would use this when you photograph small products/objects.  You would place the object in the box and shine your studio light at the side or top of the box.  Well, I figured if it works for that why not wildflowers.  The only thing I had to change was cutting out the bottom of the box so that I could place it OVER the wildflower in question.  The enclosure really did help reduce movement from breezes, diffused the light and it also worked to hold my printed background up as well.  Below is a photo of my set up.

Now, of course this set up would not work if it was really quite breezy since the tent is very light, but then I would not be out with my macro lens at all in those conditions.  

A real bonus here also is that this tent is collapsable so it fits in my camera bag and is light so it does not add any additional weight.  If you find there is too much shadow you can just use a reflector to bounce some light into the tented area.

Here is my final image from this shoot.  It is not one that I particularly like (and maybe that is why I never did this post before), but you can at least get an idea of what I am talking about.

So, there you have it, my big secret to working on wildflowers with my macro lens.  I do hope it was worth the wait and I am so sorry it took me so long to get this posted.  

I would like to thank my friend for pointing out this omission to me and for keeping me honest :).