The Making of "Orange!"

How the winning photo of the "Macro - Flowers and Plants" contest was made

By david94903 in Photo Contests on Jul 27, 2019

"Orange!"

Thank you to everyone who nominated and voted for my photo. I am humbled, thrilled and stunned to be the winner, especially since there were so many amazing photographs in the June 2019 photo contest. I am truly honored to have been chosen from the excellent pool of submissions.

INSPIRATION

I have always had a love and fascination with macro and close-up photography, and I’m a big fan of contrast, color, dynamic lighting. One of the things I love about macro work is that most of the time, it’s not weather or time of day dependent. I took this photo on a gray rainy afternoon in February 2012. There was a vase of flowers on the dining table that I decided to pilfer for potential subject matter. This particular bright orange flower seemed to satisfy my need for color, so now I was left with contrast and dynamic lighting. To satisfy that itch, I used an LED flashlight to illuminate the flower from many different angles. I found that I really liked the effect of back lighting, as it caused the orange in the flower petals to glow and gave me reverse contrast. Whereas with front lighting, the recesses between the petals would be dark and the petal surfaces would be light, here I got bright recesses and darker petals. After many more shots than I needed, it was time to pick an image and process.