Post by Saknika on Feb 1, 2010 0:46:23 GMT -5
Flowers are one of those things that everyone tends to take photos of, and as such it becomes harder and harder to get something unique and beautiful. The real trick to it though, as I have found through experimenting for years, is to make sure it doesn’t look like a snapshot.
There are some key things to remember when taking photos of flowers to help improve your skills at capturing them.
1. Remember that a flower is soft by nature. Petals are silky and smooth in most cases. It’s rare to find a flower that isn’t soft. Capturing this quality with gentle and soft light is fairly essential a good chunk of the time.
2. Flowers are plants, and thus they have many elements to them—like leaves. Sometimes, these make for better captures than the petals.
3. Break a flower down to basic photographic elements—shape, value, lines, texture, form, and colour. You don’t necessarily have to capture an entire flower for it to be a good flower photograph. Sometimes, just a part of the flower speaks louder.
Keeping those three things in mind, go out and let your creativity explode. If it’s winter where you are (like it is for me), then perhaps you can go to a grocery store and pick up just a few single flowers for cheap. Or, Valentine’s day is coming up—tell that special person in your life you want flowers with your chocolates this year! Or tell your best friend you’re going to be each other’s Valentine and make sure they buy you a flower.
I say go real, because a fake flower always looks fake. You can see the threaded texture in the petals, and the edges often fray. Very, very rarely are fake flowers ever used well in a photograph, and almost never do they do well on their own. It’s not that it can’t happen, it’s just that it almost never does.
If for some reason you have to use fake flowers, let us know. This is more for getting the idea behind photographing a flower down after all. But you’ll achieve better results with real ones by far.
For those of you who are lucky enough to still get the chance to work outside, remember that the best light is going to be the two hours after sunrise, and the two hours before sunset. If you can’t manage this, look for flowers growing in a slightly shady area, or wait for an overcast day. Or, use something white or a scrim (which is literally semi-transparent material stretched over a frame) to eliminate harsh shadows from the flower you’re after. Unless of course you feel that harsh lighting is what will be best for your flower.
If you’re working indoors, try to use window light. The light that comes in through a window (especially those facing north for some odd reason) works beautifully for photography. Try to avoid flash at all costs if it is on camera, because of the harsh shadows in will create.
Be mindful of your background as well! Make sure that it’s not going to take away from your flower.
And of course, don’t be afraid to try many different things and experiment. Honestly, I took hundreds of photos of flowers with only hit-or-miss results before I realized these key ideas and started creating photos of flowers that I like to this day.
How to Post:
1. Go take a photo, or find one you want to improve on.
2. In the same post, first comment on the photo above yours (or photos if you’d like), and then below that post your photo. You’re encouraged to share as many technical specs with us as possible.
3. Receive feedback.
4. Reshoot using ideas from the feedback you got, to try and create an even more stunning photograph.
5. Repeat step 2.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 as many times as you’d like.
Practice End Date: February 28th 2010 at 11:59pm EST. That’s 4:59am in England, and 8:59pm in California.
To get us started, here is a photo I took fall of last year of a flower.
f/5.6, 1/50sec, ISO100
I was aiming to focus on the little drop of water. This was taken in between two violent storms, and I literally was outside in a five minute pocket between them.
There are some key things to remember when taking photos of flowers to help improve your skills at capturing them.
1. Remember that a flower is soft by nature. Petals are silky and smooth in most cases. It’s rare to find a flower that isn’t soft. Capturing this quality with gentle and soft light is fairly essential a good chunk of the time.
2. Flowers are plants, and thus they have many elements to them—like leaves. Sometimes, these make for better captures than the petals.
3. Break a flower down to basic photographic elements—shape, value, lines, texture, form, and colour. You don’t necessarily have to capture an entire flower for it to be a good flower photograph. Sometimes, just a part of the flower speaks louder.
Keeping those three things in mind, go out and let your creativity explode. If it’s winter where you are (like it is for me), then perhaps you can go to a grocery store and pick up just a few single flowers for cheap. Or, Valentine’s day is coming up—tell that special person in your life you want flowers with your chocolates this year! Or tell your best friend you’re going to be each other’s Valentine and make sure they buy you a flower.
I say go real, because a fake flower always looks fake. You can see the threaded texture in the petals, and the edges often fray. Very, very rarely are fake flowers ever used well in a photograph, and almost never do they do well on their own. It’s not that it can’t happen, it’s just that it almost never does.
If for some reason you have to use fake flowers, let us know. This is more for getting the idea behind photographing a flower down after all. But you’ll achieve better results with real ones by far.
For those of you who are lucky enough to still get the chance to work outside, remember that the best light is going to be the two hours after sunrise, and the two hours before sunset. If you can’t manage this, look for flowers growing in a slightly shady area, or wait for an overcast day. Or, use something white or a scrim (which is literally semi-transparent material stretched over a frame) to eliminate harsh shadows from the flower you’re after. Unless of course you feel that harsh lighting is what will be best for your flower.
If you’re working indoors, try to use window light. The light that comes in through a window (especially those facing north for some odd reason) works beautifully for photography. Try to avoid flash at all costs if it is on camera, because of the harsh shadows in will create.
Be mindful of your background as well! Make sure that it’s not going to take away from your flower.
And of course, don’t be afraid to try many different things and experiment. Honestly, I took hundreds of photos of flowers with only hit-or-miss results before I realized these key ideas and started creating photos of flowers that I like to this day.
How to Post:
1. Go take a photo, or find one you want to improve on.
2. In the same post, first comment on the photo above yours (or photos if you’d like), and then below that post your photo. You’re encouraged to share as many technical specs with us as possible.
3. Receive feedback.
4. Reshoot using ideas from the feedback you got, to try and create an even more stunning photograph.
5. Repeat step 2.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 as many times as you’d like.
Practice End Date: February 28th 2010 at 11:59pm EST. That’s 4:59am in England, and 8:59pm in California.
To get us started, here is a photo I took fall of last year of a flower.
f/5.6, 1/50sec, ISO100
I was aiming to focus on the little drop of water. This was taken in between two violent storms, and I literally was outside in a five minute pocket between them.
