In the Studio: How I Photograph Flowers (Patreon)

I love painting flowers in watercolour. It’s not just because they’re beautiful, but because I can use my own photos for reference (pictured above). 

I’m not a photographer, but with a few simple tools I can take photos that work perfectly for painting from.

This little gadget below is my secret weapon.

It’s a flexible flower clamp that bends and twists into almost any position. One end grips firmly onto something solid, and the other has a soft padded clamp that holds the flower without bruising the stem. It wasn’t expensive. I just searched for a flower clamp for photography and found this one online.

Most of the time I pick flowers straight from the garden, but every now and then I’ll buy some from the florist if something catches my eye. When I want a simple photo of a single flower (or a few) against a plain background, this setup works perfectly.

I usually attach the clamp to a heavy book and place the flower in front of the white wall in my studio. The light in here is lovely. The windows face north and east, so I get a nice mix of soft natural light through the day. Sometimes I open the blinds and let the daylight do the work, and other times I use a small LED lamp to control the light a bit more. I’ll often try both just to see what gives the best result.

Once everything’s set up, I move the clamp around to photograph the flower from different angles. Later I crop out the clamp and adjust the lighting in Photoshop. I use both my iPhone and my Canon camera for these shots. The phone includes a lot of detail whereas the photos that the camera takes have more depth of field.

It’s such a simple thing, but it’s made photographing flowers so much easier. And having my own reference photos means every painting starts with something personal and unique.

Louise

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PS: Thank you again for all of your kind messages! They mean the world to me. I'm doing ok! 🥰