Designing for the Camera

[LORRIE]

Tracie

I too am a novice in this area and am struggling to take "real" photos for my new website. About a year ago I took a nightschool class in digital photography. It was invaluable to me since I really learn best by DOING. For a small investment in time and money it has really paid off. I'm still not great at it but at least got the basics-and the teacher owns a studio so we have cross referals.

 

[Tracy D'Amico]

Lorrie, another great idea ... don't have a digital yet, but another summer project for Hubby. Thanks !
tracy

 

[12BucksFor2Dozon]

U actually dont need a full time setup in the store. It is not space effective. I use a portable setup, which I got from bhphoto.com,
...

Well that's what I used to think, but too many gorgeous arrangements have "slipped" by without getting shot, and since I want my site to be 100% FlowerHaus, I cannot afford to keep putting it off. Having the setup 24/7 online will make sure that anything that looks great *will* be shot and posted. It just didn't work well trying to tear down/setup.

The lighting for these was pretty "ghetto", a $29.99 halogen fixture pointed at the ceiling, reflected back at the table. I would NOT recommend it for many reasons. First it messes up white balance on the camera a lot, giving you a yellow tint on everything, unless you shoot in RAW format and know how to fix it, it's a PITA.
...

This made me chuckle..I have similar halogen lights I bought for like $8.65 from our local Big Box, and figured I could fix the yellow cast with the PS color correction tools (done it before manually) or with a plug-in. Your idea of bouncing the light off the ceiling instead of direct is something I would never had thought to do, thanks!

P.S. Cute nephew you have there!

 

[CHR]

Along with discussing the tips for setting up a photo area, I'd like to address some do's and dont's of the arrangements themselves.

Below is an image of a poor design, not only from a purely mechanical aspect but from the vantage point of a camera. Here's why: (see the numbered areas of the image on the right.)

1. Greens and dirty water in the vase. Make sure to remove all foliages below the water line, esp for work in clear glass. Use fresh water.
2. Wacky weeds. Be careful about the amount of beargrass and other loose foliages used. What may look good in person can look out-of-control in a photo.
3. Orient the flowers to the camera. Seems like a 'duh', but showing the backs or sides of blooms is a common error.
4. All the ducks in a row. The white of the roses makes this error even more pronounced since their rhythmic pace is all wrong for this radial style.
5. Turn off the camera's flash. Note the heavy shadow created by the front-on shot. (See other tips in this thread for lighting suggestions.)
6. Weak Focal Area. The alstroe is too small and the wrong shape to anchor this design.
7. Foliages concealing flowers. Why cover up a hybdrid delphinium with a piece of myrtle?
8. Immature flowers. They may last longer for the consumer, but take your photos with flowers that feature their full glory.

I'll post other examples as time permits.

 

[Rhonda]

As Annie Jordan would say (my mmfd instructor)....
Plains Plains (meaning planes, planes) A picture shows flowers on single planes much easier than the eye.

 

[CHR]

Poor Design, What Went Wrong and How To Fix It - Lesson #2

While an improvement from the previous arrangement, this shot still has several issues:

1. Out of Balance Color. Not only do the yellow gerbs overpower the far-more-costly hydrangeas, the middle one is oriented in the wrong direction. IMO pale yellow or white would work better.
2. Exposed stems. The light green salal stem crossing over the dark leaves is a definite distraction. It's also moving forward in a diagonal line, which is tough for the camera to read. I'd remove it.
3. Willy-nilly foliage. The silhouette of the salal leaves are rhythmically poor and need better spacing.
4. Immature flower. We know it's a iris but the consumer may not. Also, it's generally a good idea to grade same-kind flowers in size (from larger to smaller) as they move away from the heart of the arrangement.
5. Flash shadow. Once again, turn off the camera's flash and move the design further from the background.
6. Blown-out whites. White flowers are tough to shoot and are especially effected when too much light is used. The details get blown out. In this design, the grouped whites are also not properly counter-balanced with white materials on the opposite side of the arrangement.
7. Fillers covering flowers. Make sure the fillers aren't covering up flowers, especially in the focal area.
8. Missing Buds. They're particularly noticeable on single flowers. They sometimes can be cloned in on PhotoShop but it's better just to start off with good materials.
9. Streamer Gigantus. Just like any other element, ribbon needs controlled. Streamers are generally easier to shoot if they're trimmed to fall mid-vase.

What's good? The carry-through of color from the container to the flowers.

Again, HTH

 

[wildflower]

Well that's what I used to think, but too many gorgeous arrangements have "slipped" by without getting shot, and since I want my site to be 100% FlowerHaus, I cannot afford to keep putting it off. Having the setup 24/7 online will make sure that anything that looks great *will* be shot and posted. It just didn't work well trying to tear down/setup.

This made me chuckle..I have similar halogen lights I bought for like $8.65 from our local Big Box, and figured I could fix the yellow cast with the PS color correction tools (done it before manually) or with a plug-in.

Your idea of bouncing the light off the ceiling instead of direct is something I would never had thought to do, thanks!

I see your point about setting it up all the time, makes sense. Are you putting every creation online? From what I gather, aren't many designers producing about 10 -15 staple items and then produce random "special" arrangements that they never list online? How many "stock" arrangements does a typical shop have? I am still learning.

As far as color correction, a very moderate investment into a camera that can shoot in RAW mode (something like the $500 Canon G6) and a free RAW Processing software like Rawshooter Essentials, you can make perfect colors happen EVERY SINGLE TIME. Takes one click. Basically it's the same concept as using a "Gray Card" in film photography. Using a 10% gray (off white) material anywhere in the frame, you can auto WB on that piece, giving you Perfect renditions of other colors. Every RAW processor these days does that easily. Finetuning for exposure and white balance, as well as saturation, sharpness and tonality is done in RAW also, before you save as a TIFF or JPG and transfer to Photoshop for basic resizing and cropping plus any Cosmetic changes. I recommend you looking into it.

 

[fairfield]

CHR,

You say to turn the flash off. A better idea is to use a second flash above and to the side to wash out the shadow. If you turn off the flash, you end up with dull, diffused lighting on the arrangement that will not bring out any color. Lighting is the single most important aspect of photography. The better you are able to control it, the less you have to use photoshop.

Jason

 

[wildflower]

Jason, it depends on the setups. For my photography I use a 2 flash setup on a DSLR. The main flash is on the hot shoe, diffused using something called Lightsphere II Photojournalist (from Gary Fong, the #1 Wedding photographer in US). The 2nd flash (weaker one) is used as a Fill-flash to light up the background behind the arrangement, thus illiminating shadows all together. The Lightsphere does a great job diffusing the shadows to about 20% of the original, and the 2nd flash pretty much kills the rest. In post production, it's really easy to get rid of the last traces of shadows without making it look "fake".

Now, this is not very easy to reproduce with a point and shoot camera, but not impossible.

Oh, one more important thing, TRIPOD, anything like this needs to be done with a good and steady tripod with a nice ballhead. Handheld will not give you enough "crispness". Sometimes you need pretty large prints (for flyers and brochures). You may get away with hand held photos for webshots (sizing down tends to hide artifacts and blur lines) but for anything in print (which is what I do most work for) you need a tripod.

 

[fairfield]

Wildflower,

You are right. It does depend on the setup. I use a three strobe setup with one of them being the one built into my Canon A520 point-and-shoot.

With one strobe you get a flat, two-dimensional look and shadows are abundant.

Learning to use a second strobe improves lighting dramatically. Add a third and some bouncers and diffusers and...dang! I gotta go take a picture now... Juices are flowin'.

 

[CHR]

I keep it simple and I use 3 clamp lamps and light the entire set (left, right and backdrop). All three lights are run off of one power strip. Not perfect but workable on a daily basis in the shop.

When you guys get into the professional equipment, my brain starts twirling and my mind fogs over. LOL

Wildflower, you're definitely right about the tripod but I'll venture to say that most of the shots taken by florists these days are primarily for the web. (And yes, it's easier to cover up the sins there. )

Cathy

 

[wildflower]

Cathy, you photos in the gallery are very good. The shadows are not obvious and distracting, and even add some more mood to the shots. Nothing to be worried about, good job. My equipment is worth a LOT of money, which I use primarily for high difficulty aquatic stuff, but it does help with the floral shots too. I am always building my "usable photos" gallery as I do quite a bit of sales to businesses of my shots for commercial use, (not flower stuff yet, but it does not hurt to have it available). Because of that, I need high resolution prinatble stuff and the equipment is necessary for that. When a business needs a backdrop for show banners, it has to be BIG. You can't really hide anything that went wrong on that size shots.