orange flower

For my birthday in summer I got a potted orange tree. It lived on my balcony for a while. Until it got cold. In the warm indoors it grew small, white flowers about the size of a fingernail in January. I took this photo of it, which fits into a series of similar photos I was taking of plants indoors using relatively dark backgrounds so that the beautiful flowers would stand out.

This is another example. And as you might have guessed, I was inspired to do this because I had bought a new kind of lens that was made for this. With almost all cameras, if you move too close to the subject there is no way of getting it sharp anymore. That is still true if you use a macro lens. The point where this happens is just especially late. Or rather: close. And that, in turn, means you can have very small things fill the whole frame.

At the same time I also used a flash to get enough light for the plants to stand out in front of a dark background. Like these beautiful flowers in pink and purple.