These are Casablanca Lilies and they are a varietal of the oriental lily. A few months ago I decided that I wanted to try my hand at photographing flowers. I bought a bouquet of lilies at the supermarket, grabbed a vase and some decorative black rocks, and arranged them all together. Then I sat back and waited for the flowers to bloom. Along the way, I snapped some photos with my Mamiya C220 TLR.

This was a learning experience for me and I learned a few things about how to photograph flowers. First, I discovered that it was easier and preferable to use window light instead of flash. The first photo was shot using a speedlight, while the other three were shot with window light. Unless you can bounce and soften the light, a flash will create undesirable shadows. Second, the photos where I set my aperture to f/4 had too narrow a depth of field and often resulted in much of the flower being blurry. The photos posted here were shot at f/8 and turned out much better. I think the next time I photograph flowers, I will try to maximize my depth of field and set my aperture to f/8 and above. Third, I think the lilies look nice against a darker background. There are few areas in my house where I can shoot by the window, so next time I will have to set up a backdrop of some sort to create a better background.

These were shot on expired Agfa Optima 200 and I’m quite impressed by how the film has performed. I have one more roll left in my freezer and I think I will use it for portraiture now that I know what it can do.