Some tips for flower and garden photography:
- Get low — too many flower photos are taken from above. By getting low you provide a less common and more interesting point of view and you eliminate dirt, mulch and weeds which don’t make a great background. Bring your gardening kneepads along.
- Provide a background — a black sheet of construction paper or fabric or even a piece of cardboard painted black can make a dramatic backdrop for colorful flowers. A white background provides an equally beautiful look. Use whichever pleases your eye.
- Manage depth of field. If your camera allows you to set the aperture, you can decide whether the remove distraction by blurring the background or include more details from the foreground and background by increasing the range of distances that are in focus. A larger aperture (lower number such as f2.8) will blur the background and a smaller aperture (higher number such as f16) will expand the focused range.
- Choose your light — “golden hour”, the light in the first and last hours of daylight, is softer and warmer. It makes for much more pleasing photos. Cloudy, overcast days or even rainy days can make gorgeous flower photos.
- Add light — too many harsh shadows? Use a piece of white paper to reflect light into the shadows or use your camera’s flash to fill in the shadows. Check whether your camera’s flash intensity is adjustable – a little goes a long way when making shadows less harsh.
Steadier is sharper — a tripod will help you get much sharper pictures. Find something to brace yourself against if you can’t use one.- Add moisture — a few raindrops on a bloom makes a flower shot more interesting but no need to wait for rain and risk your camera in a downpour. Use a small misting sprayer to add a little “dew”.
- Block the wind — those backgrounds and reflectors can serve another purpose. Put them between the breeze and your subject and you’ll get much sharper, better focused photos.
- Back up — close-ups of blooms are always beautiful but sometimes it is nice to see some context. Show us the whole garden or the gardener next to their prized bed or bounty of vegetables.
- Share — it is very easy to share photos in The Gardeners Exchange Facebook Group. Just add a photo to a post or create an album in the Photos tab if you have multiple photos to share.
