Never look a gift horse in the mouth – part 2

The bouquet gave rather more photographic opportunities that I initially imagined and so I have split this blog post into 2 parts. This second part highlights the shots that indicate that I was taking them against a black background, which I thought would accentuate the flowers rather than just using the greenery of the garden.

I used my collapsible 5-in-1 reflector, fitted with the black ‘flag’ cover, suspended with a studio lighting stand equipped with a spring clamp attached to the top. This works well as a background if you can get it far enough back from the subject to overcome the numerous creases that inevitably occur when it is folded. I have looked for a dedicated collapsible black background to eliminate this problem but they are all 1.5m – 2m in size and I can’t find one that is small enough to use easily outdoors. The search continues.