Flower Photography Tips
Use our flower photography tips to capture creative flower photos.
How to Capture Creative Flower Photos
Flowers are one of the most photographed subjects in the world, and they’re great for a bit of creative experimentation. Since they’re a fairly inexpensive source of beauty all year round, they are easy to photography creatively with your digital camera. The challenge is that you have to work a little harder to create something that hasn’t been done to death. If you just plonk a vase of flowers on a table and shoot it, the results will likely be uninspiring.
© Mia Rose
It's worth studying the breathtaking images of photographers who specialize in the art of flower photos. For example, photographer Warwick Orme uses cutting edge photographic technology to take the traditional floral still life into awe-inspiring new territories.
Shooting and cropping close, he captures exquisite details of stamens, pollen, and nuances of colour and pattern with all the analytical fervour of a botanist. Back-lighting adds a surreal translucency to his images so that glowing blossoms explode in super-saturated colour while the soft pale hues of fragile blooms are displayed as subtle and evocative as a watercolour.
Says Orme in the foreword of his book,
Floranova
: 'With my floral work, I try to extract the beauty of the flowers in the most simple way possible, with no distraction from busy backgrounds. I work using a digital camera, but rather than use the science of this modern technology to add extra elements to the image, I use the process to remove extraneous elements and to help the distillation process. My aim is to reduce the image to its purest form thus conveying the absolute essence of a bloom or a piece of foliage.'
Photo Credit: Warwick Orme
Flower Photography Tips
• You can get a whole day’s photography out of a single bunch of flowers – and brighten up your home – so it’s money well spent. It’s best not to buy mixed bunches. Strong, single-coloured flowers such as lilies, tulips, and roses make excellent subjects for the most creative shots.
• The background is just as important in floral photos as the flowers themselves. A messy background will detract from the main focus of the shot. Frame the picture tightly to exclude as much as possible that doesn’t need to be in the shot. A bright blue summer’s sky always looks beautiful as a backdrop for your flower photos. Simply hold a couple of flowers up to the sky with one hand and take the photo with the other for a unique bug’s eye-view. Or remove a distracting background by placing a black card behind a flower you’re photographing.
• Digital cameras excel at macro and close-up work, so make use of your camera’s ability to focus in on the tiniest detail. A tripod will be a great help here as the slightest movement will result in blur. Also make sure you check that the right part of the flower is in focus.
• Have fun experimenting. For example, placing a flower by a bright window, then overexposing (using +1.0 EV compensation) can produce a vivid, studio-style study.
• Use the lowest ISO setting you can for the best quality and to minimize depth of field.
• It can be challenging to get autofocus systems to focus on the end of the stamen, so take lots of photos and check the screen.
If you found inspiration on our flower photography tips, feel free to browse the following pages too:
Related Pages
* Shooting Flower Photos at Home
* Flower Images
* Macro Photography Tips
Hope you enjoyed our floral photos tips!
(From Flower Photography Tips back to Basic Photography Tips Home Page)
Read, reflect and be inspired. If you find something of value on our floral photography tips page, enjoy its gifts and please pass it on to your friends.
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