Flowers, all strobed up

We have some flowers – african violets, I think? In knowledgeable hands, they bloom almost continually.  In our hands, we’re lucky if it’s once a year, in the summer.  They’re blooming right now.

To the right, you’ll see a macro shot of these blooms.  While it can be expensive to get all of the right pieces of equipment, it’s pretty simple to run if you do.  In my case, I have Nikon gear, which means that I have a few flashes, and Nikon’s excellent iTTL flash technology.

So how did I get the dead-black dropoff with the lighting on the petals?  That, after the jump:

Check out these two pics:

Strobe setup, above

Strobe Setup, eye level

This is pretty much the entire setup.  Flash on the camera, to control the side flash.  A black piece of paper for the backdrop, with scissors for weighting (creating the bend in the paper) and a heavy box of candles to hold it upright.  A box of cherries and a book to elevate the primary flash.  A postcard (dental reminder, yay!) as a barndoor to keep the flash from hitting the lense.  And a piece of paper that I would hold over the flowers to direct fill back in.

That’s it.  Total setup time?  3 minutes, which includes cleaning dust from the lens (well, three minutes & 42 seconds, if you really want to be a stickler).  Teardown time: a little over 10 minutes, but only ’cause my little girl kept dragging me away.