It is now the season for irises. All kinds of irises are starting to pop open in the garden of my dear friend and photography mentor Cindy Dyer. We are neighbors in a townhouse community in Northern Virginia, which means there is relatively little space for gardening, but Cindy manages to pack an amazing amount of flower power into her limited area. Fortunately, she and her husband, who is also a Michael, live in an end-unit, so they have a bit more space than the interior units.
Cindy likes to select flowers to grow that she knows will be photogenic and love to pore over the flower catalogues on line. Our challenge is to figure out how to capture the beauty of these carefully selected flowers in the crowed garden. One of Cindy’s techniques is to use a small artificial background to help to isolate the flower. Often she uses a white foam core board to which she has attached a piece of black velvet-like material. She can then create studio-like images with a black or white background, depending on the flower.
This technique requires two people, because it is almost impossible to hold the background in place and frame a shot at the same time. I took these iris photos yesterday while Cindy held the background in place for me and then we reversed positions. In some of the images it looks like I was using some kind of studio lighting, but it was all natural night on a somewhat cloudy day that diffused the light nicely.
You don’t really need any special equipment to create this effect—you could use almost anything for a background. The day before, our improvised background was a collapsible black storage cube from IKEA that Cindy had just given me. The final photo, taken by Cindy with her iPhone, shows me holding that black cube and gives you a sense of the garden environment and how the technique is used.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Brilliant technique and gorgeous photos!!!
Thanks. It’s fun to experiment with different approaches and techniques. Normally I like to go for a more natural look in my photos, but it was tough to get uncluttered green background in this situation.
Worked beautifully!
How lovely Mike! I particularly like photos 2 and 4!
Thanks, Liz. The yellow one is probably my overall favorite, but I like them all for different reasons. It’s fun to play around like this with a completely different approach to taking photos.
Lovely!
Neat idea! Lovely.
These are beautiful, Mike. And the black background really brings out their gorgeous colours.
Thanks, Tricia. I tried shooting the same flowers with the natural background, but it looked really cluttered unless I moved in close and focused on only a part of the flower. By using the black background, I was able to include the stem and a few leaves.
It was the right thing to do. They look fabulous. Thank you for sharing such beauty.
That technique sure creates some beautiful images! Something to try out for sure. Thanks for the idea and for sharing those gorgeous flowers.
Great idea. Beautiful images.
(Just an aside to say that I was completely wrong when I commented on one of your last posts about your neighbors being someone I “knew”. The last name is what got me jumping to conclusions. In the case of the person to whom I sent some strange Norwegian culinary delight is named Dyar. Not Dyer. My apologies for jumping the gun and getting excited that the WordPress/photography community was tiny in a large world. I leapt to conclusions. Hopefully, you didn’t have an awkward conversation with your neighbor. ☺️)
No problem. I did have a conversation with Cindy, but it was not at all awkward. We talk frequently and figured that there might have been some confusion regarding the name. Although my friend Cindy helped me start my blog 9 years ago, I am actually much more active than she is at the moment in the WordPress world, primarily because I am now retired and have more free time, while she is still working.
Good to know!! Enjoy the spring!
Lovely blooms. 💜
Why have I never thought of this! There’s so much to learn about photography!
There are so many cool things that you can do with photography to mix it up or to create your own view of the world. I love to learn how others think and how it affects their approach to taking pictures. 🙂
Elegant