Description

If not, why not?  Flower shows can be a great place for photography.  They have plants in the prime of bloom and are often set in very scenic locations.  Lynn and I have been to a couple of Orchid shows and a Rose show here in Orlando and enjoyed each of them.  The most recent was last weekend’s Greater Orlando Orchid Show and Sale held at the Albin Polasek museum in Winter Park.  The museum is an interesting place to visit on its own, and is set in a beautiful lot close to Rollins college. This photo is of Polasek’s bronze sculpture of Svantovit , located in the back garden behind the museum where the orchid show was being held.

Photo hints

The one problem with this type of photo op is that you have to be pro-active and search it out.  Lynn noticed an announcement for this show in our local paper.  The table in the Summary section below has a link for a Google search that may help you locate upcoming flower shows in Central Florida.

Etiquette:  The purpose of these shows is to sell flowers, not to be your personal photo studio.  I think it would be rude to drag your tripod, lighting gear, reflectors, etc. in to one of the booths selling orchids and set up a shot and interfere with the vendor’s business.  So be polite – and buy an orchid.  You’ll enjoy it and you can make many photos of it in your home studio!

Lenses:  Macro recommended.  If you don’t have one, bring whatever you do have that will focus as closely as possible.  A mid range zoom lens might also be good to bring for the other things that are around the venue where the show is taking place.

Tripod:  Not recommended – see above.  There can be a lot of people at these shows.  Most of them are there to look at and buy flowers, not photograph them or wait until you get out of the way.

Flash:  Might be very handy to fill in shadows, especially in the shade or under canopies.  You might even want to get fancy and try using an off camera flash triggered with your on camera pop up flash.

For people new to flower photography, there’s quite a lot of how-to information on the web. For more information, you might try browsing through the results from this Google blog search for “flower photography how to”.

Summary

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.