Toilet seat still life studio

Yes you read that correctly.

My wonderful wife wanted photos of some flowers she had been given that were dying but looked beautiful as they slowly dropped their petals.

I don't have any lighting or other equipment apart from a camera, lens, tripod and 3 filters. So I had to use what was around me. Firstly something to put the flowers on, our camper van toilet, high enough so I'm not lying on the floor but low enough for my backdrop which was a 1m high white wall under a window, light source one window behind, with a blind, and front door to the left, piece of a4 white paper to bounce light and also my tiny fill in flash that came with my camera (olympus provide a little flash in stead of those pop up built in ones)

The flowers had a really deep colour and amazing detail as they dried which I wanted to try and capture but also make the photos airy, light, bright and alive rather than a dark background and dim lighting which spoke more of death. I wanted to show these flowers were beautiful even when dying.

Click image for gallery page

The sun light was bright and from behind, so the flowers were silhouetted and dark, this meant I could expose to get the flowers bright which would over expose the background and hopefully achieve what I wanted.

I used the paper to bounce a bit of light back to the bottom and tried the flash on its lowest setting. As the shutter speeds were slow I used a self timer to stop any camera shake.

I then "tuned" the image on the computer to get the colours and brightness the way I wanted

I really enjoyed experimenting and learned a lot. (like don't let your cats near the table or all the petals will fall ahhh). I have great respect for photographers in all genre and understand the need for proper equipment but also, especially as an enthusiast its fine to use the toilet.

Cheers till next time

Tony