I have been taking photos of flowers for years. It helps me enhance my attention for details, and serves as a useful means for learning botany and better understanding the flora wherever I roam. Doing so I gained some skills and have been able to take some nice photos of flowers. So I wish to share with you some tips. In this short and straight forward illustrated series of lessons, I shall emphasize several principles. Adopting them shall easily improve your flowers photos.
Introduction
Equipment
While superb equipment will definitely assist you create superb photos, this is not our goal here. This tutorial is all about improving YOUR skills rather than putting lots of money improving your equipment. On the other hand, I do not recommend using your smartphone for that. Even if they have advanced control options, their limitations will constrain your ability to get proper skills. I have always used “medium range” equipment, and by improving my skills was able to get pretty good results, as you’ll see later. So what I recommend is to use any real camera with a viewfinder. It’s better to have a DSLR or MIRRORLESS camera which also allow you to switch lenses. Many of the photos I’ll show you in this tutorial were taken with my good old Nikon D5100, with its basic kit lens AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm F3.5-5.6G.
Other basic necessities
Other things you need, as with any type of photography
Identifying opportunities
In this case – go out! Enjoy nature! Flowers are there waiting for you, in that sense they are very convenient for photography, as opposed to fauna or your baby.
Patience!
Take your time!
Lesson 1: Zoom In
First rule – get closer AND use your zoom lens. You want to show the details of the flowers. The next five examples were taken with the above mentioned equipment, with the zoom lens set to 55mm. Please welcome the Hyacinth Squill (Scilla hyacinthoides).
As you can see it is a very handsome plant
But you may enjoy it more by getting closer and showing its flowers and the insects activity around them
A closer look at the flowers exposes its delicacy,
and further zooming in to one flower give the stamens (and specifically the anthers) their proper attention
Finally we also wish to pay attention to the buds that haven’t opened yet!
Here are some other plants I photographed (with different type of equipment, but it doesn’t matter now) which emphasize the zooming in effect
Persian Cyclamen (Cyclamen persicum)
Coastal Iris / Dark-purple Iris (Iris atropurpurea)
It is indeed a majestic flower
but take a look inside…
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For personal or group guidance about flowers photography, by distant e-learning or on the field, please contact me.
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