White Camellia

This is my favorite camellia in our yard.  It's right by the driveway and I've been fighting it's overgrown nature all year, waiting for it to bloom out so I can prune it back.  It's hit me in the face almost every time I've walked to the car, so I've been anxiously awaiting the blooms.  I've never known it not to bloom in February, but I guess, with the winter so hard this year, it's just had the good sense to stay in the bud until the sun finally started to warm the earth.

The reason for this image (other than the fact that I love the white blossoms) is that I'm trying to learn about lighting.  I bought some lights at the hardware store this weekend to play around with, and some black paper to use as a background.  I tried several lighting set ups, but this was the one I liked best and I just used a little cloudy window light and a small LED "headlight".  Lighting is so important and I can tell it's going to take a lot of experimenting to learn this aspect of photography.