Tips on Photographing Flowers

By: Marty Kesselman

Flowers are best shot in soft light. Direct sunlight tends to be harsh and casts shadows. Cloudy
days can make for great flower lighting. Shooting in a greenhouse usually is wonderful since the
glass roof is usually a milky white that diffuses the sunlight providing an even lighting. The soft
lighting is so desirable that usually you do not even need to shoot with flash, unless you want to
use the flash for special lighting enhancements.

Choose healthy specimens. A flower past its prime usually is not pleasing. Sometimes it sends
a message or creates a mood. A healthy looking flower also sets a mood, usually pleasant, and
calming. Clean-up blemishes using your picture processing software to make the flower look it’s
very best.

Isolate your subject. Keep your shot simple. You want to try to fill the frame with just what
you want to photograph. For this reason it is a good idea to use a tripod. It allows you to frame
your picture, shoot with small apertures to achieve better depth of field, and hold the camera still
for longer exposures when using longer lenses to isolate the subject. Getting in very close to
shoot the inside of the flower or just the petals or leaves usually results in an excellent photo.

You may want to invest in a close-up lens pack. These lenses screw into the filter attachment
area of your lens. They come in a number of strengths that are additive, and permit your lens to
be moved closer to the subject to allow a larger magnification. Similar to the close-up lens is the
extension tube. Both do a good job. I prefer the add-on lens since it is simple to attach and
remove without disconnecting the lens from the camera, and is not camera specific. Some people
argue that the extra glass can provide inferior picture quality. Although this is true, my
experience has not found the degradation objectionable. They attach like filters and as such can
be placed in an adapter, if necessary, to be used with lenses of smaller diameter. Buy one that fits
your larger diameter lens, and an adapter to fit your smaller diameter lenses. Opening your
camera makes it vulnerable to dust and foreign objects. I am always worried, when I remove my
lens, to change lenses, that something will get inside my camera, particularly on windy days.

Getting close to isolate and magnify the image has potential problems. You can find that you
are creating a shadow over part of your flower. To avoid this use a longer lens that has close
focus capability, or put a close focus lens on the longer lens. Longer lenses tend to close focus
farther away from the subject than wider-angle lenses. This provides some working space and
can move the shadows far enough away from the subject so that it does not interfere with the
image. Depth of field goes down as you move closer to the subject. This could limit how close
you get, or force you to use very small apertures (large f#s).

If you can’t get your camera close enough to the subject, you should consider changing to a
longer lens and move farther away. Often you can achieve the same magnification with a long
lens while providing more distance between camera and subject allowing room for your tripod.

Watch out for distracting Backgrounds. Usually it is preferable to have the background go out
of focus. This tends to isolate the subject and focus attention on the part of the flower you are
presenting to the viewer. This could be a difficult task if you want to achieve a large depth of
field to capture a deep flower up close. Increasing depth of field requires a small aperture (large
f#), and could bring background objects into sufficient focus to be distracting. In these cases, try
to move your flower or yourself so that the background is less annoying and farther away. As an
alternative, you can try to change lenses. Use a longer lens, requiring a further distance to shoot
the same scene, but achieving a short depth of field that is larger than what you get when you are
up close. This can sometimes trade shooting distance and depth of field so that you can manage
to keep the background out of focus, while maintaining sharp focus over the range of interest.
You can also bring a background with you, a black cloth, or some other sheet of paper or cloth.
Hold/place/drape the background cloth over parts of the subject you want to hide. Using a flash
can light the flower brightly and throw the background black when the camera is set to automatic,
or purposely set to under-expose the shot but fill the subject with enough light to expose it
properly. Be careful, you would do well to diffuse the flash to soften the light.

Use reflectors to fill shadows, and shading subjects from direct sunlight. Paper makes a good
reflector. Colored paper will reflect warm or cool light, depending upon your color. Play around
with different choices to find what you like best. Keep in mind that you will have to hold the
reflector in place. It can be also used to create shadows in areas that have harsh light. I
frequently use my hat to shade subjects in direct sunlight. You may find it advantageous to add
some equipment to your bag of tricks to hold things for you.

Bring a spray bottle with water in it to spray flowers. This provides a nice “just rained on”
look.

Check your digital photos after shooting for proper focus and exposure. You may need to
adjust exposure compensation to accommodate a large range of brightness, or increase the f# to
achieve a larger depth of field, or focus on a different spot if you are using auto-focus.

Clearly you need to know and understand the features of your camera. Cameras today are
small computers with capabilities that are remarkable. The key is to know how to access camera
features, change them, and achieve special affects by combining lighting, depth of field, and
image size to isolate your subject.

Competition judges are usually very critical of flower pictures. Remember the subjects are all
beautiful, so the judge looks harder at the details and is more critical of technical issues. Most
want the flowers very sharp. Composition and exposure are carefully analyzed. How well the
subject is separated from the background, and color rendition are also things competition judges
are very aware of. Flowers can set a mood and many, I find, are soft in their natural look. I like
the soft look, and find that allowing the distant petals to fall in sharpness adds to the softness of
the scene (although the judges don’t seem to like that, I do it anyway). In general, close petals
that are out of focus or soft tend to make the entire image appear soft. If this is your intention, do
it, if not try to get close petals sharp and allow distant ones to soften in a natural looking way. If
you are striving for the sharp throughout look, use a small aperture and as large a depth of field as
is necessary to capture all of the imagery that makes up your subject. Blurred backgrounds lend
themselves well with soft distant petals while sharp imagery tends to look better with contrasting
backgrounds like black, white, or green.

The flowers are always smiling for you. Have fun!