I’ve been having fun with some photography of a kind I haven’t done in a while: relatively straight macro photography of flowers. The photography is straightforward (as I explain below), but the aesthetic goals are a bit different than the last time I tackled photographing Iris in this way (for example, in Winged Iris): if my work is going to be confused with Georgia O’Keeffe, I may as well consciously try for a painterly effect.

To make this photos, I placed the individual Iris on a black background, and lit them from the side using sunlight. I photographed with my Zeiss 100mm f/2 macro lens, to which I added a Nikon PN-11 52.5mm extension tube so I could get close enough.

There are so many wonderful and creative ways to tackle flower photography. It is fun to have this as my “job,” and get to come up with new approaches to the glorious and sexy subject that the flora around us presents. I hope if you have followed the flower photography stories on my blog, read my book about flower photography, and perhaps viewed my Photographing Flowers online course that I’ve given you some ideas how you might creatively approach photographing flowers.