Photo 365: Day 133 – Karl Rosenfield Peony

Yet another rainy day in St. Louis and a perfect reason for me to take a picture of Karl Rosenfield Peony indoors where I can have much control over the lighting and setup.

Here is how I shot this.

Every house has at least one spot where there is ambient lighting – in our house one such spot seems to be the dining area by the patio door and bay windows (need to explore more to find other sweet spots). So had the vase seated on a black card board and had this lit by the natural lighting coming in from the bay windows. Used a white foam board as a reflector to lit the shadows on the right side of the bloom – as this happens to be facing the interior of the house.

Then had the camera mounted on the tripod and “spot” metered the bloom using Av metering – since I wanted to bring out the details, had the camera set to f/11. Then switched to manual mode and adjusted the light speed  until I found the right amount exposure – the first one, as originally suggested by the Av metering was over exposed, so had to cut down the light.

Later used RAW/PS to pop up the colors – used free actions that I had downloaded from PW blog.