750,000 Roses With Tripod

Your job, should you accept it is to find catalog quality roses in this field of 750,000 roses. My client smiled.

So began my photo shoot at the research field of Star Roses in Wasco, California. I was not told the actual names of the roses and had a shoot list with locations like CP097272 118B. Fortunately there were only 18 new roses we needed for the 2016 catalog, and fortunately I had my tripod.

Well, actually I always use a tripod, but in most cases here in these fields we need to build the photo by looking though the viewfinder.

The roses are in all stages of bloom, but rarely does any one truss have both buds and full flower, so we look for a sturdy stem that we can add to. The “hero” rose, where the sharpest focus will be, gets center stage, and we add a few extra in the background to fill in with a bit of color. Without the tripod it would be hit or miss.

Before and After Slider

Once we have built the photo we put up some scrim to soften the bright sun, kick in a little extra fill light with reflectors, wait for the breeze to quiet down, and snap the shutter. Then … move to the next part of the field.

Ready for a catalog.

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Plant portraits is Chapter six in Think Like A Gardener