Is It Flowers You’re After?
Spring and summer bring a multitude of opportunities to photograph flowers of all types, colors, sizes, and locations. I love flowers and gardens as much as finding them in wild places. The challenge is to capture them in a unique way that gives them center stage and creates a frame-worthy image.
Here are a few ideas to help you capture your best flower pictures ever using your camera phone or camera!
Light: I try to avoid full sun to prevent washed out, over exposed pictures. I generally prefer early morning, the golden hour (the hour around sunset), or overcast days. Dappled light from tree shade can create interesting patterns or provide a momentary “spotlight” on the subject as the sun moves through the trees.
Background: I prefer simple backgrounds - either out of focus, dark or neutral tones that help the flower stand out. In the picture above, a black poster board was inserted behind the flower to isolate it. Positioning yourself to use shadows in the background also works well. If using a camera or cell phone, set it to Portrait mode to blur the background. Setting your camera to Aperture mode and setting it between f 2-f 5 will also blur the background.
Macro Lens - These lenses let you get very close to objects like flowers and insects to capture tiny details. This can be a fun area of photography to explore if you’ve never tried it.
Settings: The variety of settings are endless - fields of tulips or sunflowers, gardens, vines over doorways or trees in full bloom. Whatever the season, go where the flowers are!
Composing: A common problem photographers have is moving and seeing. What I mean is that we tend to find a subject, stand there for the “Kodak” moment and take a picture and move on to something else. If you don’t get moving you can miss the best shots! As you move around a subject notice the background, lighting, colors, and textures. Move further away. Move in close. And for goodness sakes, squate down, get on a knee or change your perspective in some way from just standing and looking. Some of my best shots have come from recomposing the image using these techniques.
Editing: When editing, I try to bring out the natural drama in any subject including flowers. Avoid over-saturating colors. In your cell phone’s photo editing app, play with ALL the sliders to arrive at the most pleasing results. I find that if I increase contrast and darken the shadows I can often make the subject stand out. Sometimes it’s helpful to add a touch of a dark vignette to spotlight your subject. You’ll just have to play around to find what you like.
There’s your summer “Flower Power” challenge! Get out there and get moving!
Explore - Capture - Inspire