Flower Workshop

I was awake very early this morning (due to my sore shoulder) so decided to go for a run as it does help to loosen things up a bit! Did some laundry and was ready to leave the house by 8.15am to drive to the studio in Amersham where I was attending a flower photography workshop with Polina Plotnikova. The workshop today was learning about light and photographing flowers as a still life - she is famous for her dancing flowers images but that is another workshop which I will probably book myself on to later this year.

There were various work stations set up in the studio with different backgrounds, a single light, and various flowers, so we each had about half an hour at each work station. It was harder than it looks to get the lighting right, particularly when some of us attempted some back lit images which is not easy when you are using a background which is obviously in the way - tip - use the softbox screen as a background instead. 

Polina likes to get it right in camera, and she also does not usually add textures to her images as prefers to use textured backgrounds which she makes herself. She judges on the RPS fine art panels and she says textures are usually over done or done badly which is why she prefers to do it this way.

It was a very interesting day which seemed to go so quickly, we were all a bit tired afterwards from concentrating all day. I know this is not everyone's cup of tea but it was very enjoyable and I did learn a lot about lighting and how to compose flowers. I have randomly chosen four images from today's workshop which I have collated into this collage.

The traffic was a bit sticky on the M25 coming home - this morning my journey was only an hour, but it was about 25 minutes longer than that coming home again. Passing Heathrow Airport it was strange to see so many planes flying again.

I will catch up with journals on the weekend - now I am going to relax and we will get a take away for supper from the Italian restaurant.