tips for professional looking floral images

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EZ Cube

master J said:
I am considering buying the 50 x 50 ezube for shop, we too have small shop and would need something that can be broken down easily,so pvc wont work for us either , my question is the ezcube and lights worth the investment?
Also, is it possible to get great shots and not have to touch up in photoshop? I'm hoping that is possible, I have never used photoshop, is it hard to learn how to use?
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I have use the PVC version, the cheaper Ebay light box version, and I have the 48" EZ cube. With space a major consideration here, the PVC version was a major hassle to move/take down every time I need the space. The cheaper Ebay light tent is just that, not real good for taking it up and down several times a week...every week. I find my "best investment" was the EZ cube plus it comes with your color choice of a professional quality poly back drop. FYI, any light tent under 48" really limits you in what you can photograph.
 
Our walk in cooler's outside is white, we found an inexpense wood pedestal stand to place arrangements on and we take the pictures up against the cooler. Works out well with little to no investment. Also a fellow florist in town hung a 1/2 circle shower rod from her ceiling and placed a heavy white sheet on it, when pulled it makes a 1/2 circle shape that blocks out the shadows from the natural light and works quite well. When not in use she simple slides it all back.

Below is a picture taken against our cooler.
 

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Oh', I forgot, one more thing, for the bigger arrangements we have a folding card table we cover with a white heavy table cloth. Here is one one picture taken against our cooler.
 

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Pam -

If you turn off the flash and/or move the pedestal farther away from the cooler wall, you won't get the shadows.

MasterJ -

We use PhotoShop Elements and its fairly intuitive but an online class would help. For us, it's faster to clean/correct in PS than to shoot until a design is perfect.
 
CHR said:
Pam -

If you turn off the flash and/or move the pedestal farther away from the cooler wall, you won't get the shadows.
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Thanks, I sometimes do that. I actually like a little shadow, to me it gives it a real feel, so the customers know this is a real picture, not a stock image.
 
online class

CHR said:
Pam -

If you turn off the flash and/or move the pedestal farther away from the cooler wall, you won't get the shadows.

MasterJ -

We use PhotoShop Elements and its fairly intuitive but an online class would help. For us, it's faster to clean/correct in PS than to shoot until a design is perfect.
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do you have a link for an online class on photoshop, thanks so much!From what i've read, I think i will get the 50 x 50 ezcube, i am willing to make the investment rather than taking the chepo route....havn't seen any negative posts about ezcube , just positive, so it looks like the answer for me :)
 
I'm jealous, we use the 36" EZcube and it's too small for a lot of what we do. I'm slowly learning from the "Photoshop for Dummies" book, I can now extract the arrangement from the background.

When I get stuck, I ask my 13 year old niece for help...it's amazing what the kids know now. The electric typewriter was the only technology I learned in high school!
 

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photos for my web site..

here are a couple of photos I took this week using the 4x8 piece of laminate (thank you CHR!) and 3 track lights focused on the flowers..and a tripod.
 

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twiggy - your photos look very good! Something Cathy also mentioned once before, pertained to foliages in photography. If you can work some variegated greenery into your designs, they'll show up more in your photos. We started using a lot more variegated pitt, and pitt nigra and even hostas in summer. It's amazing how much lighter it makes the photos - greens actually show up more.

I wonder if you could work a light from angled beneath the flowers, it might prevent the shadowing?

great job!
tracy
 
For those who want to save some bucks, try Google's free Picasa2 to touch up your images. It does a great job for many different photo editing techniques, is VERY VERY easy to use, and will teach you enough so if you need more advanced stuff you can upgrade later to photoshop.
 
thanks Tracy! i'll try those lighter foliages and see what happens. It wasn't hard, that laminate made all the difference. On these 2 i actually put the tripod (table top size) on a ladder.. and then since i'm so short i had to get a step stool to get up there to look through the camera!
 
12BucksFor2Dozon said:
For those who want to save some bucks, try Google's free Picasa2 to touch up your images. It does a great job for many different photo editing techniques, is VERY VERY easy to use, and will teach you enough so if you need more advanced stuff you can upgrade later to photoshop.
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Wow! Verry cool! I just downloaded it, and briefly ran through my bridal images. You can make really cool effects also, that funky shot where the background is B&W, and the flowers are color, sepia, cropping etc etc.

Thanks Mark!
:)
tracy
 
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