John....#3 is an absolutely marvelous picture...Best of show for sure...Just
charming...Martin
-----Original Message-----
From: John A. Lind <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 9:04 PM
Subject: [OM] Unexpected Surprises
>A few days after the New Year, I went to a friend's home to show he and his
>wife the basics of making macro-photographs of flowers. He has a studio
>out of which he does weddings and portraiture, but he had never this type
>of "still life" before. Mostly, his wife wants to do some artistic
>work. The benefit was being able to play with his studio lights again and
>I struck a deal that whatever I shot could be used in exhibition. :-)
>
>Took the OM-1n which still had a half-roll of Portra 400NC in it (would
>have liked to use 160NC but didn't have any), the extension tubes, and the
>50/1.4, 85/2, 135/2.8 and 200/4 lenses. Turn out the flower his wife
>wanted to photograph is and amaryllis in full bloom. These was not the
>small house plant I was expecting; it stands almost 3 feet tall! [My other
>half's idea of house plants are African violets.]
>
>Rearranged his lighting from a "cross" setup with fill using three strobes
>to a single strobe for a couple shots using "loop" and then changed it to
>"Rembrandt" for a little more contrast. There was enough "bounce" from the
>walls and ceiling that fill wasn't needed. Set up the tripod with an
>extension tube on the 85/2 and got a frame-filling photograph of one
>blossom on her amaryllis with the "Rembrandt" setup:
> http://johnlind.tripod.com/amaryllis03b.jpg
>
>Then came the unexpected . . .
>
>I had the camera off the tripod to move it again for a different
>perspective from a greater distance. One of their cats showed up in the
>studio to investigate what was going on. Quickly pushed the tripod out of
>the way and managed to get three shots of the cat before he decided he had
>seen enough. Got this grab shot of the cat [color balance and print
>exposure is off making working with the scan difficult; it needs to be
>reprinted]:
> http://johnlind.tripod.com/amaryllis01b.jpg
>
>A few minutes later, their 18 mo. old son escapes the room he's been penned
>into and he wanders in. I didn't know this beforehand, but his mother has
>been teaching him to sniff flowers. He even does this now with pictures of
>flowers! This enormous amaryllis is sitting on a short pedastal and the
>blossom was just about his height. You guessed it; he wants to sniff the
>flower and manages a good whiff about the time his mother gets hold of him
>at the belt line to keep him from grabbing at the plant. Before he managed
>to rip a part of a large petal off, I managed to get one more shot:
> http://johnlind.tripod.com/amaryllis02a.jpg
>
>At that point we declared a "break" for our model and allowed the plant to
>return to its table in their kitchen.
>
>The first one is a decent photograph, but you can bet I will use the second
>(if it can be printed properly) and definitely the third one for
>exhibition. Sometimes it's the unexpected that creates the best ones!!
>
>-- John
>
>
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