Dramatically improve your flower photography by adding light from a wireless flash. If you photograph flowers, you can make them stand out by adding light from a wireless flash.

While it is not difficult to photograph flowers, like all outdoor nature photography, we are at the mercy of Mother Nature and that means we don’t always get the light we want. You can solve this problem by using a wireless off-camera flash. It can in many cases dramatically improve your photography.

When I know I am photographing wildflowers I will take my Canon 580EXII and the NPT-04 radio triggers and the Fotodiox mini lightbox to soften the light on flowers. Also, several light stands for multi-flash setups.

My strategy for lighting flowers is I want it to look REAL and not flashed because contrast looks really ugly. I usually use a 100mm macro lens for smaller flowers but today I am using a 28-70mm lens because these flowers are so big. I have set my aperture to f/5.6. and my ISO is 100.

The last thing is when you have a grouping of flowers instead this little mini lightbox won’t cover it. The solution is a larger lightbox like this 18×18 inch one. I am holding the lightbox over the flowers and the additional light brightened up these foreground flowers nicely. On this final photo I darkened the background by changing the shutter speed from 1 second to 1/4 second and that makes the foreground flowers stand out nicely.

The large Lupine are out and they look great! I shot this one in a shaded forest using flash in a light box to add shape to it and create separation from the background.
I shot it in the Columbia River Gorge for a magazine assignment which I will announce in the fall when it is published.The exposure was F/4 @ 1/200 with a 580EXII flash and Fotodiox mini box.
You can see my eBook: Outdoor Flash Photography here.

You love photography and want to photograph full time by launching a photography business. Maybe you are unemployed or wish to supplement your retirement income or simply wanting to earn money doing what you love.

For those with jobs you may not want to quit the day job until your business is launched and earning you an income and enough income allowing you can quit that day job. Maybe you are unemployed and if so you can get started right away but be careful if your financial resources are limited.

So how do you get started? I have compiled these ideas into the 12 most important steps I believe are crucial to finding success as a professional photographer in today’s markets.

Finally….my new eBook: Outdoor Flash Photography is published and available.

If you have a flash and wonder how to use it, or you wish to learn how to apply light, this eBook covers it all.

You’ll learn:

  • The functions and features of the flash
  • How to see light
  • How to improve your flash photography
  • How to shoot action
  • How to tell stories with light…and much more!

Only $9.97

Click here to read more and order.

Last weekend I co-taught a workshop with Christian Heeb and David Cobb on the Business of Outdoor Photography which was held at the Cascade Center of Photography in Bend, Oregon.

While I was demonstrating wireless strobe lighting outdoors, something important to outdoor photographers, I asked David to stand in as my model.

As you can see by the expression on his face, he was very excited at the invitation to model for me.

For the technical aspects read on….