Friday Photography

This week is all about flower photography. No art history this time just tips and suggestions with a few photos that I took over the past couple of days.

This week’s assignment is Architecture . Anything goes with this one, buildings, details, spaces inside spaces, anything that you can think of. Black and white, color, heavily edited or straight out of the camera it's all good. Either post them here or on a thread I'll put up tomorrow. (or both).

Please post any photos, comment about anything or ask any questions about photography (If I don’t know the answer someone here probably will)- Please treat this as a photography open thread.

Photographing Flowers

Introduction

The following is a selection of tips for photographing flowers. They are meant as guidelines and not hard and fast rules. My thinking on this subject is not nearly as hard and fast as the declarative tone of the piece suggests. I just didn’t want to make it five percent content and ninety-five percent qualifier. My philosophy is know the rules then break them with happy abandon.

The photographs were all taken over the last couple of days. They are all of flowers and plants but they do not relate specifically to the text. Just in case anyone is interested they were taken with an old Nikon D40x camera and the kit lens that came with the camera (50mm - 200mm) zoom. Editing was done in Lightroom in all cases and the Google Nik Collection of filters in some cases.

Light.

Lighting is key to any photography and flowers are no different.

The worst light to photograph flowers in bright hard noon sun. The hard shadows and bright highlights look ugly and the contrast is too much for the camera to handle.

Open shade is OK though. The best type of open shade is that provided by a wall or the side of a building. The flower may not look appealing to the human eye but the camera will like it a lot! Open shade provided by a tree canopy is better than harsh sunlight but not ideal. It can through a green cast over the flower and even a slight breeze can cause the flower to be in bright sun one second and shade the next.

Images shot at noon (or any other time for that matter) will be fine as the cloud cover diffuses the sun’s light and stops hard shadows from being cast.

The best time to shoot is the hours or so around sunrise or sunset. The light is very soft and very warm and no cloud cover is required. The sun comes in very low at these times and this can really bring out texture (especially if the sun is 90 degrees to the camera in relation to the subject). For a more spectacular effect position the flower between yourself and the sun (use the flower itself to block the sun) this can be hit or miss so experiment and don’t worry too much about a bit of lensflare.

Composition

A big group of brightly colored flowers looks great to the human eye but meh to the camera. Our brain does a lot of processing and editing of the information received by our eyes but a camera is basically dumb in this regard. It gives everything in front of it exactly equal weight and while this is very democratic it tends to make for very average photographs. Composing an image requires some work.

Always decide what the focus of the image, i.e. the main subject is. If you are photographing a group of flowers select one as the main flower and then compose around that. This alone will likely take the photograph out of the snapshot category. Make sure that your focus is as sharp as possible on the main flower. The rest don’t matter - trust me on this. In fact if the rest are not in focus this will help direct attention to the one that is.

The above principle applies even if a single flower is taking up most of the frame. In this case make one specific part of the flower the focal point of the image . This could be the reproductive parts (stamen, pistil etc) or the edge of a petal say. Again, you want this part as sharp as possible. Let’s scale this right up. Say you want to photograph a meadow or a field of flowers then it is worth selecting a group of flowers to be the main focus of the image.

You may have heard of something called the rule of thirds. This is really very simple. Imagine a tic tac toe grid over the image. Important elements of the composition should, in theory, be placed on these lines and the points where the lines intersect are very strong. In my opinion this rule can be useful when starting out but with practice good composition becomes second nature. Over reliance on the rule of thirds will produce images that are not terrible but not great either.

If shooting a group of flowers try to aim for an odd number in the group, three is ideal with one as the main, in focus one. Try to avoid having flowers on the same horizontal or vertical imaginary line as each other if possible. Four flowers in a square or rectangular formation should always be avoided.

Be aware of the background. This one can make or break a photograph. Obviously remove any clutter, anything that doesn’t add to the main subject of the photograph. This can be dead leaves, twigs or even man made debris such as paper etc. The important thing is that the background does not dominate or draw the eye.

Camera Settings

There is enough to worry about with lighting and composition without having to fiddle endlessly with the camera. If possible I would set the camera on aperture priority and set the aperture to the largest possible then either set the iso to where it allows the shutter speed to be reasonably fast if possible (I aim for around 1/500 as this is more than fast enough to cancel any hand shake or slight movement of the flower caused by wind). It is perfectly OK to set the iso to auto if you don’t want to mess with this. Doing this means that you will get a shallow depth of field. As much light as possible into the camera, and won’t have to twiddle knobs and mess around with menus between shots.

All of the images accompanying this piece were taken using an old Nikon D40X camera and the 55mm - 200mm kit lens that came with it. I like to use a long lens (200mm) and position myself about four feet from the plant I am photographing. This makes it easy to blur backgrounds and I just like the look that this focal length gives to be honest. Some people prefer working much closer with a shorter lens and that is fine too. I would avoid wide angles though unless you are trying for a very specific effect - the distortion is hard to manage.

Some General Tips

Photographing a flower on the level rather than looking down at it generally works best.

Look at the flower from several angles before crouching to take the photograph.

Remember that even an inch difference in the position of the camera can make a huge difference to the composition.
Be prepared to get up and reposition yourself if the composition just isn’t working.

Have a spray bottle with you - A fine water mist on the flower usually makes it look better.

Macro lenses are useful for flower photography but remember that cropping is always an option - camera sensors come with so many megapixels losing some is not likely to diminish the image.

Fill flash can be used to get rid of shadows if shooting in hard light is the only available option.

A reflector (such as a piece of white card) can be used to throw some light into areas of the plant or flower that the available light isn’t reaching in sufficient quantity.

A Caveat

The above instructions or guidelines are all geared towards getting good traditional type images of plants and flowers, the type of image that could make its way into a gardening magazine for example. This is not the only way to approach the subject of course. You may, like me, be more interested in a more experimental or abstract approach in which case ignore everything to this point apart from the laws of physics. The compositional rules and aesthetic assumptions described really should be regarded as optional.

Earlier I stated that hard, direct sunlight should be avoided and this is certainly the case if you are after a traditional result. I, however, you want something a little different then an image with very hard shadows containing little detail and strong whites may give a better result. Likewise, placing flowers on a straight horizontal line is usually not desirable but if you are after a strong graphic image then this can work just fine.

Assignments

Last week's assignment - flowers

Last week’ s assignment was flowers in black and white. The results are here:
http://caucus99percent.com/content/weekly-photography-assignment

This week’s assignment - architecture

This can be any image where a building, part of a building, or a space is the main theme. It can be an indoor or outdoor shot and in color, black and white, and processed or edited however you see fit.

Where to post your images

I'll put up a new thread tomorrow, around noon ET, specifically for the uploading of photos relating to the assignment. If you want to post them here and/or on tomorrow's thread that is fine.

Finally

“Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.”
- Alfred Eisenstaedt

This is an open thread so have at it. Post photos, questions, thoughts etc. - anything to do with photography, however tenuously, is actively encouraged!