Floral Flames
I love how this turned out with some simple ingredients: a flower, some highlighter ink, and ultraviolet lights! Here’s a photo of the setup: donkom.ca/bts/IMG_20191124_141144.jpg
A soon-to-be wilting Gerbera daisy was ideal, as it was spilling out pollen which made for an nice accent to the image. A flower like this would naturally fluoresce, but nowhere near as much as the orange highlighter ink used, becoming a “campfire” or a pool of lava in the center of the flower.
The lights here are important – two Convoy S2+ and one Convoy C8 Fyrfly – the latter being my favourite, but a little more expensive ( www.engeniousdesigns.com/product-page/fyrfly ). They are all positioned with Platypod Maxes and gooseneck arms, which is now my standard way to light every macro scene. Far more robust than standard tabletop tripods which I had used for years. Just an FYI here, they’re on sale at the moment - platypod.com/tripods/max-macro-bundle
Normally at this level of magnification, focus stacking would be required to get the depth seen here. Thankfully my life is made easier by shooting the Lumix S1R in high-resolution mode, outputting 187MP files that allow me to excessively crop in to the center of the frame and still have detail. The closer you get to your subject, the shallower your depth of field is; by intentionally getting farther away, the depth of field is inherently greater, but your subject will no longer fill the frame – which is where cropping comes in! I don’t need 187 megapixels, but if I crop down to a 10-20MP image, it’s still incredibly usable and my depth of field has been maximized. You’ll want to avoid apertures smaller than F/11 or so, since diffraction will ruin your critical sharpness at these resolutions.
Funny thing – the intensity of the UV light hitting the flower was enough to cause damage to the flower almost immediately. The petals started drooping down towards the center, which can be seen fully fallen in the “behind the scenes” photo. The amount of UV output here is MANY times that we would find in nature. I had to work quickly once I realized this was happening!
This technique and many more will be outlined in my upcoming book, Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet: skycrystals.ca/product/pre-order-macro-photography-the-un...
Floral Flames
I love how this turned out with some simple ingredients: a flower, some highlighter ink, and ultraviolet lights! Here’s a photo of the setup: donkom.ca/bts/IMG_20191124_141144.jpg
A soon-to-be wilting Gerbera daisy was ideal, as it was spilling out pollen which made for an nice accent to the image. A flower like this would naturally fluoresce, but nowhere near as much as the orange highlighter ink used, becoming a “campfire” or a pool of lava in the center of the flower.
The lights here are important – two Convoy S2+ and one Convoy C8 Fyrfly – the latter being my favourite, but a little more expensive ( www.engeniousdesigns.com/product-page/fyrfly ). They are all positioned with Platypod Maxes and gooseneck arms, which is now my standard way to light every macro scene. Far more robust than standard tabletop tripods which I had used for years. Just an FYI here, they’re on sale at the moment - platypod.com/tripods/max-macro-bundle
Normally at this level of magnification, focus stacking would be required to get the depth seen here. Thankfully my life is made easier by shooting the Lumix S1R in high-resolution mode, outputting 187MP files that allow me to excessively crop in to the center of the frame and still have detail. The closer you get to your subject, the shallower your depth of field is; by intentionally getting farther away, the depth of field is inherently greater, but your subject will no longer fill the frame – which is where cropping comes in! I don’t need 187 megapixels, but if I crop down to a 10-20MP image, it’s still incredibly usable and my depth of field has been maximized. You’ll want to avoid apertures smaller than F/11 or so, since diffraction will ruin your critical sharpness at these resolutions.
Funny thing – the intensity of the UV light hitting the flower was enough to cause damage to the flower almost immediately. The petals started drooping down towards the center, which can be seen fully fallen in the “behind the scenes” photo. The amount of UV output here is MANY times that we would find in nature. I had to work quickly once I realized this was happening!
This technique and many more will be outlined in my upcoming book, Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet: skycrystals.ca/product/pre-order-macro-photography-the-un...