A tiny weed and the 'studio' set-up.

I have a couple of Christmas Cactus cuttings on the kitchen window ledge. Also in the same pot was a dormant sorrel seed that decided to germinate. These produce beautiful, tiny yellow flowers amid a profusion of folded, heart shaped leaves. They are probably classed as a weed but I love them and let them grow wherever.

This shows why I like them


The sunshine was far too bright to photograph them as they were so I got some thin plastic food preparation sheets - (common items about 12inches x 18inches, red for meat, green for salad, blue for fish etc.) - and played with them to get a considerable variety of translucent backgrounds. I settled on green in front of red. This went about 12inches behind the subject. The camera, on a tripod, was set up as close as I could get with a Takumar f1.8, 55mm lens (about 18inches).

Here is the Oh-so-simple setup as seen in the original shot, before editing.


Just enough light got through to provide a lovely glow on the flowers and there was just enough shadow to provide a nice contrast and some abstract shapes in the background.