A Flower By Any Other Name

I can’t remember if I have mentioned this in the past or not, but one of my “clients” is my wife, a floral designer. (All you married folks know why I put the quotes on there…). As she does weddings or events, I usually help with setup and take photos for her portfolio of work. We have been working on putting her website together lately which means processing all the photos I have for her portfolio. I was working photos I took of her work at the The City Club of San Francisco. A wonderful location in the heart of the Financial District. Here are two of my favorites from that event.


What I loved about these two shots are the fact that I could use the background to augment the flower arrangements. With the top one I was able to place the staircase and mural to really draw you into the floral arrangement. The bottom one was placed in front of two windows that looked down a narrow space between the building, so you get this nice effect of infinity. I wasn’t happy with how the light took away from the flowers, but somethings just fall out of your control…

One of the things I find useful is to look at the different floral books that my wife has for inspiration and ideas for new ways of looking at flowers; this is really needed when doing an on location shoot like this. (In case you’re wonder what type of “floral books”, her most recent purchase was Flowers In Love.)

3 Replies to “A Flower By Any Other Name”

  1. Terrific shots Greg, in particular the second one. I love the buildings and the lines converging to infinity. I was wondering how did you illuminate the flower arrangement.

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  2. Thanks Rafa! I actually just had my trusty 580 Speedlight with a Strofen softener attached. Angled the flash at 45 degrees. This works well for most situations to give decent accent lighting…just enough to bring out the details in the flowers.

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