The beautiful musk mallow is a wildflower that’s an ideal subject for a plant portrait. But what if it’s blowing a hooley or the light’s not quite right? All is not lost. As long as you have a window that looks out onto some green stuff, or even just sky, you can still achieve a lovely portrait by shooting indoors. I find my Nikon AF 105mm f/2.8 Micro works well for this – you can get a shallow depth of field and drop the window pane behind completely out of focus.
Cut your flower with plenty of stem and put it straight into water so it doesn’t wilt. The caps on orchid tubes will hold the stem in place, or you can simply place a piece of tack at the top of a small stem vase. Follow these tips and nobody will be any the wiser that you shot the image inside!
Expert Tip
Even when cut, flowers continue to move, so you need to shoot them in quick succession if you’re capturing sequences to blend multiple light setups or focus stack. Images in a sequence can be grouped in Lightroom by highlighting your chosen images, rightclicking and selecting Stacking > Group into Stack.