How I made the setup: 

The set up cost me about one hour to complete. The hardest part was to get the roses in a nice bow around Mieps and Archie. At first I took some shots of Mieps with the roses around her.

My mum came up with the great idea to use an old wooden house as a base to attach the roses to. We used tape to make them stick to the house. 

I used my regular setup with the clothing rack, the roll curtain and my reflective screen to light up shadows. 

I used the program Photoshop to edit the photos from this photoshoot. 

I started with selecting the images I liked the best, I prefer doing this with Adobe Bridge. You can easily give stars to photos you like, so you can find them back later. 

When I start editing I begin with adjusting the RAW file in the RAW converter. With the photos from this photoshoot I adjusted brightness, white balance, shadows and I added some brightness to Mieps and Archie's eyes. 

When I finish with the RAW converter I open the photos in Photoshop to start editing. 

Step 1: At first I adjusted the colours with Nik Color Efex pro to make the image more moody. You can download this plugin for Photoshop for free. 

Step 2: After I was satisfied with the colour corrections with the Nik collection I cloned away the spot where Mieps her abscess used to be. 

Step 3: To complete the image I adjusted the brightness and contrast, I applied colour correction to make the roses more pinkish. At the end I made Mieps her eye a bit brighter by placing a white dot on it with the layer blend mode 'overlay'.

Step 4: The final step is adding my watermark and save it to a jpeg file so I can share it on Instagram.

I often get the question how I get the ''blurry background''. The blurry background is called 'bokeh'. I try to explain how you can get bokeh in your photos in the video below. 

A few tips to get pretty bokeh:
- Make sure there is enough distance between the subject and the background
- Use a low aperture (like f2,0)
- Bright light helps to get nice bokeh. Wait for the sun to shine on your background or through your background if you work with a natural one like trees or use fairy lights in a indoor setup.