For the shot above I first picked some magnolia flower petals and then froze them in a shallow container of water and then shot the block of ice backlit.
The method I used for this was:
- find a shaded but bright area of our deck to work on
- and place a silver reflector on the ground
- on top of the reflector I placed a large square transparent tub (it was about 50cm by 50cm and about 20cm deep) upside down
- place the tripod with camera (with 90mm macro lens - however at this distance a macro isn't required) directly over the upturned tub
- put the block of ice on the centre of the tub
As I was aiming to take an image of the flowers embedded in the ice and I had all this setup I figured I might as well also take a timelapse sequence of images of the block of ice with flower petals embedded within as it was melting.
The idea is to allow the soft reflected light to backlight the ice and flowers within (sort of like a poor mans light box); I also didn't do this in the bright sun because both the white balance and exposure would swing too widely if clouds passed over the sun, etc.
The following is the timelapse movie which is the result of 330 images taken at 30 second intervals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmWAhq-2XZs
