vanda-dend-phal guy blooms a noid catt

[ntgerald]

[pavel]

That's very nice, Nelson!

[Brutal_Dreamer]

How strange, Nelson! I love it! Do you grow many cattleya orchids?

Cheers,
BD

[Bikerdoc5968]

Very beautiful....the photography is equally professional. Do you use multiple lights with slaves or what? Care to share your photo skills with us?

[Molly Taco]

OOHHH!!! I love green orchids. Oh Shoot I love all orchids.
Cin

[ischel1]

Very lovely Nelson. Doc is right, your presentations are always so artistic. C'mon share.

[clintdawley]

Good job! Whatever the hybrid is...it's very heavy on C. luteola!

[ntgerald]

Very lovely Nelson. Doc is right, your presentations are always so artistic. C'mon share.

I take photos in my bedroom. I guess you can do that when you live alone. The background is composed of two meters wide black corduroy that I bought from a garment store, hung on one wall. I have felt paper of other colors but I am too lazy to change backgrounds, lol. Besides, black insures no shadow.

I have two reflectors, but I use ordinary screw-bulbs for them. I have two cameras, an Olympus C5060 point and shoot (a bridge camera actually) and a Canon C400D or more known as Canon Rebel XTi in the USA. The latter is equipped with a macro lens and a ring flash. However, I have not really warmed up to the Canon, as I find it too cumbersome, so I use it only for really small blooms.

Meaning, most of my postings are done with the Olympus. That is the reason why I lust after the Olympus E3 currently, and I may find myself getting this for my third camera, using the Canon only for the smallest blooms. I like the way colors come out from the Olympus.

I take probably 30 to 50 shots per plant and choose the ones I like. I am self-taught so my methods are really primitive, lol...

So there, I don't really have any secrets at all. It is all a play with light, so make friends with your camera. Try to have all floral segments have the same amount of light, so multiple light sources really help. If needed I use one or even two more study lamps to augment my light sources.

Also, use your "third eye" to compose. Visualize what the whole thing looks like when projected. It is like looking at everything from above, yet anticipating what it looks like from the front. The swivel- type live-view LCD of Olympus really helps with this.

[cindiras]

I like the Olympus C 5000 series, but at 5 megapixels, I wasn't happy with clarity. My next step"up" is an Olympus point and shoot- FE-210. I can enlarge photos to 8x10 with less graininess than the 5000 series. It does have a macro zoom that I have used to shoot pics of chicks, haven't tried it on blooms! Give it a few more years time and I will look into upgrading again.

[Kerry]

Aah, Nelson, you always take such good photos. There's no point trying to give me technical specifics, you've just got the magic touch.