In all its glory

My mother rang me up recently to see if I could take some photos of an orchid (actually technically a Gloriosa Superba or Glory/Flame Lilly) that was flowering so I thoughtI'd give you a quick post about some photos I took recently and a bit of the story behind them.






Ok technically it was pretty simply, I thought I'd have a go shooting in direct sun with a reflector, it didn't work great, but I got the one below. Basically the light was just too hard and there were harsh shadows that couldn't be filled due to the shape of the flower.




So I moved inside with a black back drop, I put a shoot through umbrella with sb-25 on the left slightly above and angled down a little, a reflector on the other side, a bit below and angled up (white roof also provided some fill from the spill) and ended up with the shot up top and the one below. I also shot a bunch of other angles and individual part of the flower and was able to keep the lighting pretty much the same for all of them.



Background story:
Basically this was my grandmothers and as the story goes after she passed away my mother was cleaning up and came across this "empty" pot with nothing but dirt in and very nearly threw it out! But because my grandmother was into gardening particularly spectacular (and often rare) flowers so she held on to the pot for a while and look what grew! So more that just being a spectacular flower it will always be a reminder of my wonderful grandmother.