Tag: Oenothera

Evening Primrose II – On Black

I went back to my Oenothera plant over the weekend and experimented with my SB600 speedlight in slave mode. These pictures were shot with the external flash roughly at right angles to the camera. The results are interesting!!

I didn’t have to work too hard to get a black background in either of these pictures due to the positioning of the external flash. I also notice that the colours are less harsh now that the light is not parallel to the lens. Compare with the earlier post on the same flowers.
Technical Data

1/160 f/9.0 (Top)
1/200 f/9.0
Nikon D80
105mm f/2.8 Sigma macro lens
SB-600 Speedlight Flash
Post-Processed in Adobe Lightroom 4.1
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Evening Primrose – on black

Oenothera’s are a genus of plants native to the America‘s. In the United Kingdom they are grown as annuals, but due to their self-seeding nature, they come back year on year. These are some of the last flowers for this year.

Two pictures: The top one focussing on the petals to bring out the delicate veins, the bottom one to focus more on the stamens and carpel of the flower. In order to achieve a dark background, a flash was used with high shutter speeds. The blacks and shadows were adjusted in Lightroom 4.1 to give a complete black background.
Technical details:

Nikon D80
SB-600 Speedlight Flash
Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro lens
Post-Processed with Adobe LightRoom 4.1
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