Spring is here, and that means that flowers are blooming everywhere you look, and they make for marvelous photo subjects. Of course, you can photograph them in a natural way that shows off the surrounding light and environment, but a black background can add a sense of drama and show off the vibrant, eye-catching colors of the blooms. It does not take that much equipment to do so either! This excellent video tutorial will show you what you need and how to go about doing it.
Coming to you from Jason Friend Photography, this great video tutorial will show you how to use a speedlight to create dramatic photos of flowers with black backgrounds. Even if this is not your normal sort of work, it is an excellent exercise in the basics of lighting, particularly in the inverse square law. Remember that this states that the intensity of light is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source. Put more simply, the power of light tends to fall off more quickly than our intuition might lead us to think. We can use this to our advantage by creating an exposure in which the subject is close to the light source, everything in the background is far away, and the exposure parameters are such that the artificial light is the main source, leading to a well-lit subject and a background thrown into darkness. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Friend.
