We love sharing the best work of our PHOTOGRAPHING FLORA students. In this class we talk a lot about the importance of the background and how a bad background can steal the thunder of your main subject in the photo! And while we definitely encourage our students to experiment and explore different backgrounds, we also find ourselves enjoying pictures with the most simple background possible – just pure white color. White is about simplicity, about cleanliness, virginity, purity… But above all – about NOT taking the focus from the main model!
There are several ways to achieve a nice white background.
- Obviously, the very basic one is to use just a white, well background – for example paper, cloth, or even a shirt… But this might get a little bit tricky when you are photographing with available ambient light as you will need to minimize the presence of shadows
- You can use your electronic flashes or softboxes. Our favorite way to use the flash is to photograph together with white opaque plexiglass sheets.
- Another way is to tape your subject onto the window and photograph flora against the strong outdoor light. You would be surprised how a nice and simple white background can be created by playing with the exposure!
All methods above (and so many more!) we are covering in our class and our participants are sharing beautiful images with us. So do not take only our words for it and let us illustrate what we really mean by “Flora on white background”, with several outstanding examples, taken during our previous Flora classes…
And what do our students have to say about Photographing Flora class?
I truly enjoyed this course. It got me outside to shoot and to think about flora. The lessons were fabulous. The class photos were beautiful I would recommend this course to anyone interested in flowers and flora. Thank you, Patrik and Monika
Martha Rumley
Thank you for a wonderful and inspiring class. With your encouragement I have been able to play and experiment and be creative with my flower photography. I truly appreciate the lessons and the excellent critiques.
Pam Corckran
This has been an eye-opening class. Watching critiques has been invaluable, with his kind encouragement and clear guidance for improvement. I hear Patrik’s voice in my head sometimes now when I take photos now! I also learned a lot and gained inspiration from my classmates. I will probably take it again.
Mika Geiger
Thank you, Monika and Patrik. Your style of teaching is so much fun and enjoyable. There are lots of things to learn but not enough time to do it! I wish you can change it to 6 weeks! Your video critiques are most helpful. I learned quite a few techniques from your suggestions by listening to your critiques from my classmate’s works.
Vangie
PHOTOGRAPHING FLORA class begins September 4th, please join us here and learn how to photograph Flora too.
We are looking forward to meeting you in class!
Patrik and Monika Banas