A Lily In Reflection

[Mike Jordan]

I enjoy shooting a number of different flowers, but I think the Lily's are one of my favorite. A lot of people like shooting them out in the wild, but I've always preferred to bring them indoors so I have more control over background, lighting and don't have to worry so much about wind, mud, rain and crowds of people getting in the way.

Below is a Stargazer Lily that I shot sitting on top of a front surface mirror. It was a challenge getting the lighting and background setup so the lighting didn't show and the background did. I ended up draping my black background cloth above so that the reflection showed as completely black.

This is without the mirror of another Stargazer...

And then of course... what do you do after they have been shot to death... literally? Why, shoot them some more. D

Mike

 

[JaniceL]

Beautiful series. The last one gave me a smile, "Shot to death"

 

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

Fun stuff Mike. Love the last one!

 

[Mike Jordan]

Thanks, Ernst and Janice. I'm looking forward to when the Easter lilys come out. It seems they haven't been that available the last few years, so I'm hoping they will be this year. I use to be able to buy a bunch of them at Costco fairly reasonable but I think the flower growers have been exporting all of what they grow.

Here are a couple of my favorite ones done of Easter Lily's:

Mike

 

[Leia]

I have to avoid the lillies in the stores (ACHOOO!!!) but I could look at them all day here and enjoy them 100%. Beautiful work....and love the sense of humor on the shot to death image. it works.

 

[Mike Jordan]

Thanks, Leia. I have some shots of yellow Lily's too that I really like. This is a group that I took a 5 image panorama and stitched the images together. It loses some of the effect on the screen, but it made for a great enlargement since I was shooting close with a 24-70L lens

And here is a close up of one of the yellow Lily's...

Mike

 

[BobH]

You have some really nice shots here. I also liked the "shot to death" one, looks like Janice has some competition in the pun department.

The Lily ones are nice too, I could easily see the B&W shot with the sun (or what looks like the sun) shining through it being used on the cover of an Easter service program.

 

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

Hey Mike, I can't wait for the Calla Lillies to arrive this year, one of my favorite subjects.

 

[Mike Jordan]

Thanks, Bob. Both of those have been used by church groups. Another one was used on a bunch of book marks that one group produced. When Facebook really started getting popular, I found a bunch of my Stargazers all over home pages of teenage girls. I found them because they had linked to the images on my web site and it keeps statistics on where page referrals come from and I was getting a lot of hits from there. I guess they thought they were pretty or something.

Ernst, me too. I don't have the space to set up my equipment like I use to, my wife took back over our living room and I had to take down all my backdrops and studio lights and platforms I had set up so I could do quick shoots. I used it a lot for shooting the dogs but also did a lot of still life and table top stuff. I'm hoping to be able to clean some stuff out of the family room though and set things back up down there. I've been away from shooting flowers and things like that for too long.

Mike