My garden (small as it is since I live in a condo and basically have a 4′ X 8′ plot under my kitchen window) is full of Hydrangeas. Two of them are Lacecap Hydrangeas – they have been there the longest and are huge. All the other varieties I have stuffed in there are small and have failed to get nearly as large as the 2 Lacecaps. I keep working toward having a wall of hydrangeas out there – but so far have not managed to get the middle section to grow beyond a foot tall. This set of photos is from the flower head of one of those smaller plants. It starts out as a blue ball one and starts to fade into the prettiest blue/green shades as the flowers age. I saved some of the heads last year and let them dry out… and they are just as pretty dried as they are fresh.

For this set up I have a wood surface I’m set up on by my favorite window to photograph at. I have my old crate on the table that I am using as a backdrop to give me some pretty deep shadows back there. I have added some of my antique books in the mix – the more decorative the cover – the more I love them and I finished off with a pretty piece of green cheesecloth.

I have the light coming in from the window softly from the left side and all off the lights in the room off so I only have the natural light on my setup.

For these photos I was using my Lensbaby Velvet 85 lens set at about f4.   Canon EOS 5D Mark III | ISO250 |1/1000s | f4

*The finished photos were processed with the Scrumptious Lightroom Presets (preset 43) and the Curiosity Textures (texture 25) on the entire collection.

This is a pullback of my set up – I was playing around with the composition and seeing if I liked it with the flowers spread around on the table or not. I am using that black card to manipulate the light – I keep moving it around as I am taking photos to see what differences I can get. (The black card is held up with a clamp I got at the hardware store. An easy way to get a helping hand when you are photographing by yourself!)

Here is a look at my before photo – straight out of the camera and then the after with the Scrumptious 43 preset and the Curiosity texture 29. All of the photos below are using that same preset and texture.