Tips on flower photography

March 16th, 2008 | Filed in: Photography, Tips |

When you are shooting flower photography, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind so that you can get a better photograph at the end of the day and evolve as a photographer.

Composition
When you take photos of flowers, it is really important to think about the composition. Following the rule of thirds is perhaps really important if not most vital here in this area, because flowers can be pretty uninteresting to look at, and it is our job to make them look really interesting.
Now, after the rule of thirds comes the second vital element to think about: Never shoot down on a flower! Why? Because it makes them flat, stuck to the ground, well always pretty uninteresting. Treat your flowers like they are equals, come in at an angle, but never shoot down on them. From the side and up works really well and perhaps just slightly down from a side works as well, but not from all above.

The rest of the composition techniques is basically to make it a little unique. Use the depth of field to your advantage to get an interesting composition for your photograph and use both of above to get there.

Depth of Field
Yes, depth of field is another big thing in flower photography and especially when you are outdoors in the nature, you find that it helps you a lot in more close-up photographs. It’s always good to be able to bring a flower into focus by making the background out of focus and it can help your photograph become much more dramatic. Be wary however of too much depth of field where it can be hard to get the full flower into focus.

Tripod can help!
It can help you out a lot if you are using a tripod as support. It means that you can get closer and focus more presicely without moving when taking the shot. A tripod is really to recommend if you are after really tack sharp photos.

Find a clean background
If you have a background which contains a lot of different colours and different things then you are likely to create a very unbalanced photo and have the viewers attention drawn to another part of it where you don’t want the attention to go. Generally speaking, clean out of focus, green backgrounds work really well, unless you go with a pitch black or white background.