H.T. Fotography - Durban, South Africa

Pictures from shoot at home
Model/s: Flower - Not very Talkative but very good at posing and standing still

Make-Up: We tried putting on mascara but decided to go natural

Photographer: Henrik

Equipment : Canon 40D
580EX II flash
2 x 430EX flash
blue card board
snoot
grid
Shutter speed : 1/80
Appeture : F10
ISO : 100
Lens: EFS 18-55 (kit) @ 55mm

So I go to a friend on the weekend to say hi borrow a car/truck etc and he shows me these flowers on a strange looking plant. Well they do look sort of cool and different to the usual sunflower / rose sorta stuff. My friend tells me they only bloom once per year and only during the evening and by the morning they are dead. So I said oh that's nice. I don't really like taking pictures of plants because there does not seem to be much of a challenge. As well as the plants freek me out they seem too co-operative and very quite. I mean you pose them and they just stay there and don't complain. It just spells out serial killer in my mind. But anyway so he tells me he wants some pictures of the flower. I return the car and then he grabs a flower off the tree and hands it to me and says 'when you come tomorrow bring me some photos of the plant.' Oh OK I said, hey he's loaned me his car and did not even ask for fuel so serial killer plant photos it is.
Hey I need his car / Truck occasionally for a bit time to time and its always good to go say hi and it means a lot to him when I bring a few pics of things Ive taken. So ive been learning how to light the strobist way, still a way to go but its good learning, which I like. The guy who runs strobist is cool and very happy to share his knowledge via blogger.
Back to the killer plant so how to do light the evil thing.

To me I wanted to give the plant a glow so to do that I light from the back of the plant with a 430ex on 1/8 power. I wanted to get the side top light to catch the petals but I also did not want the light to go all over the show. Enter the home made snoot, it was made to go onto my 580ex it seems to do a good enough job. the Flash and snoot attach with hose shoe adapter was mounted to the tripod and the flash set at 1/8 power. Last but not least I want the centre thingy, cant remember what its called, to be lit so a another home made item , a grid made from card board, to help only light the to fall in the centre bit. That flash was set at 1/4 power as the card board seems to soak up the light quite effectivly. So there you have it. A picture of the serial killer plant. Please if someone can tell me what the plant is I would like that. I will look as well if I find out I will post the name. Thanks.