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Flower photography is a major component in outdoor photography. The delicate beauty of a flower lends itself to artistic expression. My photography portfolio wouldn’t be complete without a healthy amount of flower images. If you’ve attempted flower photography, or macro photography of any kind, you’ve probably learned that taking good flower pictures is much more than pointing a camera and clicking the shutter.
There’s a lot involved in good flower photography. The right equipment is needed, along with knowledge of composition, focus, and exposure. All these turn a flower snapshot into an amazing photograph.
Equipment for Flower Photography
• Use a tripod. Flower photography is never amazing without the use of a solid tripod. In flower photography, you’ll need one that allows you to get right on the ground with your camera. The best tripods have features like full ninety degree leg adjustments and a removable center pole. With these functions your camera will have solid support while getting eye level with small flowers.
• Reduce the chance of blurry pictures with a remote shutter release. There’s a lot of magnification in flower photography, which means even a slight jiggle of your camera will cause a blurry image. A remote shutter release lets you take a picture without touching your camera. That’s one less jiggle to worry about.
• A TTL flash makes flower photography artistic. Even though flower photography is mostly done outdoors, a flash is still needed to create the best pictures. It’s perfect for filling shadows with light. To the human eye, shadows won’t seem to matter, but in photography a difference of just three stops can make the darker parts of a picture too dark. A TTL, or through-the-lens, flash reads light through your camera’s lens to get proper exposure, automatically adjusting it’s flash accordingly.
• Flower photography needs a macro-capable lens. Many wildflowers are very small. Without magnification with a macro lens or macro filter adapter they will be too small in your final photograph. The best type to use is a macro lens with 1:1 (life size) ability. You can also use a 1:2 (half life size) lens that costs less, or a long telephoto lens with built in macro adjustments. Without a macro lens, your flower photography options are severely limited.
• Buy a lens hood. Quite often, the sun will create glares right on a lens’ glass. A special hood can be screwed onto the end of your lens that blocks light from directly hitting your lens elements. These are inexpensive, just be sure to check the barrel size of your lens before buying one. Also, make sure it’s designed for your lens’ length. Otherwise, sun spots or dark edges can ruin your flower photography.
• Flower photography colors are more intense with a circular polarizer. There’s always polarized light reflected from plants. This reduces color saturation in your photographs. A circular polarizer will help reproduce flower colors accurately and are easy to use. If you’ve never used one, read my photography article How to Use a Circular Polarizer.
Composition in Flower Photography
Good composition is the difference between flower snapshots and works of art. There are rules of thumb in flower photography composition that aid in deciding where to place flower subjects in your pictures.
• Flower photography benefits from the Rule of Thirds. There’s something magic about using the number three in composition. Photography appears less static, less constructed, when it’s composed this way. Divide your frame into three, either horizontally or vertically, depending on how a flower will be framed. If the image will be of a single blossom, place it more to the left or right facing into the frame. Place flowers growing together in a horizontal bank nearer the top or bottom. The same goes for a flower or group that would look better in a vertical frame. The rule of thirds is a basic principle in all art, and flower photography strongly benefits from it.
• Cropping is vital to flower photography. One of the most important aspects in flower photography is what’s not included in an image. It’s easy to clutter a picture with too many subjects. Be sure to have only enough surrounding objects to provide context, and even then only when context is necessary.
• Fully include your flower subject. A common mistake in flower photography is clipping off part of a subject. Cropping out surrounding clutter is important, but not so much that tips of flower petals are missing. Flower photography should mostly include full blossoms. There are exceptions, of course, but use your best judgment. In other words, everything in your flower photography is deliberately included, and what’s excluded is also on purpose.
• Unnoticed invasion destroys flower photography. Often in flower photography a stray twig sticks right into a picture and isn’t noticed until later when going through the finished work. Every time you’re about to take a photograph, stop just a moment and make sure something isn’t making an unwanted appearance. The best way is to look at the frame’s edges. This may not seem important in flower photography, but a branch, twig or edge of another flower will lead a viewer’s eyes out of a picture, which isn’t where you want them looking.
Flower Photography Requires Sharp Focus
To make your flower photography exceptional, be sure to understand the mechanics of how focusing an image works.
Lenses focus on a single point. Everything else in an image’s frame is less focused in relation to its distance from the plane of focus. Flower photography needs special attention to this fact, since much of it involves magnifying small flowers. Because your flower photography often deals with small objects, a fraction of an inch makes all the difference. Unless techniques of focus are understood, you’ll end up with flower photographs where part of a blossom is tack sharp while the rest is blurry.
Focus is controlled by two things; the focus ring on a lens’ barrel, and the lens’ aperture.
Focus Ring
The focus ring on a lens barrel is turned to bring your subject into sharp focus. It works by adjusting glass elements inside the lens. Simply turn the focus ring until the flower is sharply focused. You can do this manually or, with auto focus turned on, by pressing your camera’s shutter release button half way.
Lens Aperture
Aperture is probably the most vital tool in flower photography. A lens’ aperture is the hole that light enters through in a camera. Like shutter speed, it is measured in terms of “stops” and can be made larger or smaller. The smaller the number, the larger your aperture is opened, allowing more light through. A single stop, say from f4 to f2.8, doubles the amount of light coming through your lens. The opposite is also true; adjusting a single stop smaller from f2.8 to f4 cuts the amount of light in half. Aperture works this way throughout the f-stop range.
What this has to do with focus is how light behaves when passing through an opening. With a small aperture, light is less scattered passing through a lens, making an image more focused. In flower photography your subjects are often small, requiring a macro lens, so you’ll be using small apertures all the time, generally around f18 or f21. However, if an aperture opening is too small, light will re-scatter once it has passed through, like water gushing from a small hose, so make sure your f-stop setting isn’t too small; generally any setting past f28. Find a sweet spot in that small f-stop range and stick with it. Your flower photography will improve greatly.
All SLR cameras keep their apertures completely open to provide enough light for composing until a picture is taken. Some cameras have a function called “preview” or “aperture preview.” It’s simply a small button that, when pushed, closes the aperture to whatever a setting happens to be. This is a fantastic feature, allowing you to check if the flower is fully focused. Looking through a smaller aperture during preview will make the frame darker, but this inconvenience is minor compared to how it benefits flower photography.
One thing to note, shutter speed must be adjusted in the opposite direction of each aperture stop changed. For example, you take a light meter reading of f11 with a shutter speed of 1/30th. At f11, there won’t be quite enough of your flower in focus so you adjust the aperture three stops smaller to f21. But now there’s not enough light for good exposure. Slowing the shutter speed down three stops returns your settings to a good exposure. Aperture is priority in flower photography; it’s better to slow the shutter speed than increase aperture.
Correct Exposure in Flower Photography
Principles of exposure aren’t any different in flower photography than in other photography genres. There’s an ideal mid-range called “neutral gray” that light meters are calibrated for. Neutral gray is your starting point for proper exposure. Underexposed flower photography looks dark and details don’t pop out. Overexposed flower photography is washed-out looking and, again, details don’t pop out. Take time to understand and use exposure techniques to more easily improve your flower photography.
Modern cameras are equipped with good light meters and these can be used effectively to set exposures. There are also good handheld light meters that are more versatile to use, which is why I recommend them for flower photography.
There are two ways to ensure good exposure. One is using light reflected from flower subjects. The other is using incident light shining on flower subjects.
Reading Reflective Light
Getting exposure readings from reflective light will most often be done with larger flowers, such as varieties grown domestically in gardens or as landscape accents. The light meter in a camera gives exposure readings in your viewfinder. All you have to do is adjust either the aperture or shutter speed while your flower subject is framed until a correct exposure is indicated. With a handheld light meter, hold it close to the flower and turn the meter’s knobs until shutter speed and aperture measurements line up.
One note on reflective metering: all-white or mostly white subjects will trick light meters into reading as if there’s more light reflected than there actually is. You’ll have to adjust for a longer exposure, usually about two stops. Another option is to purchase a “gray” card, which is a piece of cardboard that’s colored neutral gray, and then take reflective readings from it instead of the flower itself. My flower photography improved greatly after paying a couple dollars for a gray card.
Reading Incident Light
As stated before, incident light is the light falling on a subject, and is my personally preferred metering method for flower photography. This technique requires a handheld light meter.
Handheld light meters take readings reflectively much like a camera’s light meter. But, they come with a thin, white shield or white bulb that slides over light sensors, diffusing light hitting the sensors. With this shield in place, hold the light meter at your flower subject with the meter facing your camera and then take readings normally.
Aperture is Priority
Because sharp focus is so vital in macro flower photography, aperture becomes your most important exposure setting. To maintain focus, take light readings with an f-stop setting around f18 or f21. Adjust shutter speed to match for good exposure. This is true regardless of which metering technique is used in your flower photography.
Artistic Considerations
There are a few common techniques widely used by flower photography professionals that consistently increase artistic appeal.
• Out of focus background. Flowers are delicate, and creating softened surroundings enhances the delicate appearance of flowers in photography. Backgrounds will automatically be out of focus in macro images, since life size magnification means objects only an inch away are too far from the plane of focus. Larger flowers, however, don’t need to be magnified. To ensure blurry surroundings with big flowers, use large aperture openings with faster shutter speeds.
• Backlighting from the sun. Most flower petals are translucent and appear to glow when sunlight passes through them. This is an incredibly beautiful effect when captured in flower photography. If possible, compose so light is coming from behind flowers. To see some outstanding examples, look at this slide show by Becca Greiner, Beautiful Ohio Spring Tulips.
• Flower photography is better when contrasts of color are used. Red, yellow and orange are warm colors. Green, blue, and purple are cooler colors. When warm colors are composed in front of cool colors, a beautiful effect is created where a flower photograph appears more three dimensional.
• Use wide angles in your flower photography. Large flowers are big enough to use any lens, so experiment with wide angle lenses. Get close to a large flower, like an iris or daffodil, so that it dominates your image while leaving enough room for objects farther away. When carefully done, images are made with depth and a sense of distance.
There are many things you can do to make your flower photography artistic and beautiful. Be creative and willing to make bad flower photographs to discover other techniques you can use.
A Flower Photography Walk-through
We’ve discussed some important techniques in good flower photography. In closing, let’s walk through the process of taking a flower picture.
• Find a good flower subject. When you’re looking for a flower to take a photograph of, find the best specimens possible. Make sure petals aren’t torn, faded, or turning brown.
• Compose. Don’t worry about exposure or sharp focus until you’ve composed your picture. Focus enough during this step to tell what you’re looking at. Then, take advantage of the rule of thirds and think of your photograph’s frame as a grid, with lines dividing it vertically and horizontally into thirds.
• Focus. After you’re satisfied with how objects are placed, focus until your flower subject is tack sharp.
• Exposure. Now is the time to set exposure. Take readings, either reflective or incident, and find out what shutter speed is a perfect match for the aperture setting you need.
• Double check. Examine the frame, ensuring nothing is intruding into your flower photograph that you don’t want there. You may need to recompose or even move the camera a little.
• Patiently wait. Flower photography needs lots of patience. Breezes will move flowers almost constantly, but for a good flower photograph your flower must be perfectly still. Wait patiently until there’s no breeze, and then take your picture using a remote shutter release.
• If you’re relatively new to photography, it’s a good idea to take two more pictures, one a stop underexposed and another one a stop overexposed. This is known as “bracketing” and helps make sure you’ll have a good flower photograph. Use the shutter speed for these adjustments since aperture is priority for sharper focus. Bracketing should be your standard practice until you’ve developed lots of flower photography experience.
Flower Photography is Very Rewarding
Nearly all outdoor photographers have taken lots of flower pictures, and for good reason. Flowers are so unique and beautiful they lend themselves to artistic expression. Use the knowledge and tips in this article on a regular basis, and it won’t be long until your flower photography is good enough to display in your home. Who knows, you may even sell some of your work to admirers of what you’ve accomplished with flower photography.
Sources: Personal Experience
View samples of my flower photography in this slide show:
Flowers and Haikus
Helpful Links:
4 Vital Principles of Landscape Photography
How to Use a Circular Polarizer
Beautiful Ohio Spring Tulips by Becca Greiner (Linked by permission)
The above is a random extract from Associated Content, visit Associated Content for the actual writer of this article.