A few flowers to brighten up the room

I had a lot of fun with this sunflower still-life photoshoot.

The photos in my Instagram post were taken in a three-bay window of a bedroom in the evening when the sun was shining directly in. I then added a reflector to give light to the other side of the flowers, which made a noticeable difference. The shadows were difficult to account for, but by changing my position, I was able to avoid most shadows in the photo.

I took advantage of the gray background to make the flowers pop, and I played around with a couple of different angles. I had trouble arranging the elements on the table so they would work well together without taking attention away from the sunflowers. The other plants added a nice green contrast to the yellow on the sunflower, but it was challenging to balance the two competing colors. In the end, the lighting worked in my favor and I was happy with the turnout.

I layered the other plants to add depth and contribute to the peaceful theme I was going for. I liked the idea of using a reading nook and made sure to capture the comfortable chair in the background.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking through Dina Belenko’s still-life photos on Instagram and love the way she sticks to a color scheme for her backgrounds. I was inspired by her work and tried to wash out the background objects sticking to the gray color scheme. This made the yellow sunflowers pop so much more.

I often take my space for granted, so photographing it was a happy diversion from all the work I do in this space.