Right now I’m making a series of photographs from which I’m going to create some floral tapestries. I made this photograph a few days ago, just before it was clean-up time at the end of a day of staging and shooting floral scenes.

Before I shut things down, I typically ask myself what more can be done with a prop or with a scene before I tear it down; in this case, I had some eucalyptus leaves and a sunflower head from a set-up earlier in the day. I imagined a macro image with some combination of leaves and flowers, and as I started to arrange things, I remembered my taxidermy insect collection. I keep a variety of props around my studio, including lots of bugs. I’m never sure when they will come in handy, but they invariably do. For example, this scene felt very ordinary at first. Then I remembered my bugs.

I found one that compliments the eucalyptus leaves and sun flower and that contrasts with the purple background on which everything sits. I like to glance at a color-wheel when I’m composing studio images. That way I make sure colors and tones in a scene work together.

I worked on the placement of each element in relation to the others until I arrived at this scene. I don’t work with a tripod, so it took several exposures to get one that was properly in focus and aesthetically balanced. As I worked, I kept hearing one of my mentors in my head: “Fill the frame!”

In order to test my theory that the addition of the beetle was required to make a uniquely satisfying image, I made several without it so that I could compare. In the end, I felt that the addition of the little Frog Legged Beetle made all the difference. It made the picture complete in my view.

What are the TWO most impactful features that make your image a good photograph? Don’t be shy!

Wit and execution of technique are the two most important features of a good photograph, in my view, at least as they relate to the Frog-Legged Beetle and Sun Flower. Emotional content paired with competent technical implementation, in this case, anyway, resulted in an appealing, interesting photograph. I try to have my sense of humor come through in my photographs. It’s one thing to get a nice still life with colorful flora. It’s another thing altogether to make a viewer smile and linger on a scene by adding an unexpected element – a bug – into the mix. The insect adds wit and humor to an otherwise ordinary still-life image.

Wit, however, is not the end. The technical elements of a photograph have to be executed well in order to create an effective image. Light, colors, composition and focus all need to be spot-on. The completed photograph needs to deceptive in a sense. It needs to look easy, in spite of the fact that each part of the photograph has to be well thought out and well executed.

If you could make this photo again, what would be the ONE thing you would like to do better or different?

I tend not to use a tripod when I make still-life photographs. I like the ability to easily move around and recompose a scene on the fly. I rely on the strobes (shutter speed) combined with modern auto-focusing systems to save me from out-of-focus images.

In hindsight, if I went back to redo the Frog-Legged Beetle and Sun Flower, I would use a tripod to guarantee the nth degree of focus.

Gene Dominique shared this photograph with the FRAMES Facebook Group.

Photographer

Gene Dominique, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

WEBSITE
INSTAGRAM
FLICKR
BLUESKY

Equipment and  settings

Canon R5 II with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens (and RF adapter). Single Paul C. Buff Einstein strobe in a 24″ x 36″ soft-box, controlled using a Buff Hub lighting controller. Shot at 1/160 sec @f16.