Photographic Blog: A Beginners Guide on How to Photograph Flowers

Vibrant colours

With all their vibrant colours and various shapes and easy access, it’s no wonder that flowers are a popular choice for those who are new to photography. It may seem easy to just walk up to a flower and snap a picture, but if you want your pictures to stand out, then, with a little planning and forethought, your photographs will have more visual impact instead of looking just average.

Field of Poppies © A Webber

Best angle

Next time you’re out walking or perhaps in the garden and you see some flowers worthy of photographing, instead of pointing your camera down at them to take a picture, try a different angle to get a better perspective, this could mean getting down to there level, or even below them looking upwards to the sky.

Image by Cubanjunky

Image by n0rthw1nd

Focal point

When you’re photographing flowers, consider where the focal point of interest is, if you’re taking a wide angle picture of a field of sunflowers or poppies, or a meadow full of wild flowers for example, the focal point may be the flowers nearest to your camera, as in the 2nd image above, with a single blossom the focal point could be a close-up of the petals or stamens (immediately above), find something in the frame to grab the viewers attention.

Image by Global Jet

Distracting elements

Be aware of anything that may distract the viewers eye in the frame; things such as litter can spoil an otherwise good image so move it out of the frame. Sometimes there may be some distracting elements in your frame that can’t be moved, so your choices would be to either move yourself to a better position, try and crop them out by moving closer or zooming in, or you could just change your depth of field to a wider aperture so that anthing you don’t want in the frame will be blurred and out of focus.

© A Webber

Lighting

When shooting outside, the weather will have a big impact on your photographs. Overcast days can be better than bright sunny days for some flower shots as the flowers aren’t washed- out by the rays of the sun, but when you are photographing in the sun, try shooting in the morning or late afternoon and evening to take advantage of the softer light.

Avoid using direct flash to light your subject, as this can also lead to a washed- out looking photo so try Fitting a diffuser, or try a reflector to bounce the available light onto your subject; a white piece of card will suffice.

Image by pedrol

Indoors

If you want to eliminate any distracting elements and have total control over lighting for your flower shots then just bring them indoors ; here, you won’t have a troublesome breeze, and you can try experimenting with different coloured backgrounds and various lighting techniques, or try photographing your subject near a window for more natural light.