Flowers are beautiful but not easy to photograph correctly

The Big Secret Of Shooting Flowers. If there is such a thing as a big secret it is this. Shoot flowers from a position they are not normally seen at. Like getting down on the ground and shoot upwards. Or lie down and shoot the flower into the rising or setting sun.

Many time when you see a flower photo in a magazine and you say to yourself wow that looks good it is because you have not seen it from that position before and so it looks different to you.

Best photography tip. Lie down to shoot the flowers

 Shoot Flowers on Overcast Days. Taking photographs on very cloudy overcast days is best as the light is naturally diffused by the clouds and so is softer and the colors of the flowers will be natural. Also shooting at dawn and at sunset are good times, not the best times as some flowers don’t open up until the sun has climbed into the sky and some close up as the light falls. Water Lilies do this.

Flowers Photographed as Macro Photography

Macro Flower Photography. Photographing flowers can be done with any camera or any lens but for the finest details a macro lens will be needed. But I prefer to use my 300-70mm and them crop the photos afterwards. if you are going to shoot a real close up of a flower and get the tiniest details you will need a tripod. Also the DOF. Depth of Field is critical so a larger f# like f16.

I need to explain here that larger f-stops are only needed if you are shooting macro as the depth of field is very narrow. If you are shooting with a zoom like a 200 or 300mm then the smaller f#’s would be best, like f5.6 or less this ensures that the background is faded out or has a good bokeh as it is called.

Photographing interesting flowers

 Look for Interesting Angles. Light and Shadows. Study your flower very carefully before clicking away, look what is behind it. Try to get interesting light spots and shadows as in the photo above. You can use your exposure compensation to darken the shot and help bring out the richer colors try at -1 and -2. Experiment with different camera settings and take a number of shots.

The biggest problem when shooting flowers is usually the wind, as the slightest breeze will have the flower moving about. If you shooting handheld you will need a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion. As a rule of thumb if you are shooting with a 200mm you will need a shutter speed of at least 1/200 th sec. and 1/300 th sec. for a 300mm. get the picture?

Flowers are fragile and can move a lot in a light breeze

 Photographing Flowers. There are many website offering technical details on macro photography and or shooting flowers. They will all tell you in all kinds of technical jargon what you should do and not do. So remember one thing. If you are new to photography with a DSLR shoot a picture in “Auto Mode” first and study the settings the camera chose.

If the flower is moving the camera will not lock focus and may well refuse to fire. So either wait until the wind drops or come back another day. Or set to a higher shutter speed. This you do by increasing the ISO. I almost shoot all my photos on ISO 400. Most cameras can handle this with a minimum of noise, but be warned as the ISO increases so does the digital noise in your pictures.

Experiment with different photography techniques.

Photography Techniques or Tips. Try and get some black material with a mat finish like velvet, not real velvet as that costs as much as your camera did. Use it as a backdrop like above. I have it tied between two short canes, or get a friend to hold it. Also you can go to a local florist and buy fresh flowers quite cheaply and you can pick the ones you want to photograph you can set up a soft box at home and shoot as many as you like and they will stay still.

So I hope you found this little article to be of some help if so please consider sharing it.

More Photos of Flowers

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Juvenile Eastern Lubber Grasshopper with Dawn Dew Drops

Camera Settings. Photographing bugs is of course macro photography but you do not need a dedicated macro lens as any lens will take a picture, sometimes I use my 70-300mm but only when the opportunity arises and this is the lens I have with me.

But I do my bug hunting trips with my 100mm macro prime. By the way. I shoot with a Sony SLT a77. A dedicated macro lens is the way to go for the best insect shots. The f-stop or aperture setting is very, very important because of the DOF. Depth of Field. or how much of your bug is in clear and sharp focus. see the shot of the fly below as the focus tapers off.

Macro Photograph of a Fly showing the Depth of Field or DOF.

 DOF or Depth Of Field. This is critical for sharp pictures as in the shot above of the fly. Photographed at f5.6 the fly is about 1/4 inch in length so the DOF at f5.6 is very narrow, you can increase this by moving the camera away from the subject a few inches so trial and error will show you what is happening. If I had changed the f-stop to f22 all of the fly would of been in sharp focus.

The shot of the fly below shows the facing side of the fly is in focus but the legs on the other side are not, this is at f6.3. Another thing to consider when doing bug shoots is the shutter speed will be a lot slower so a tripod is essential. And your ISO setting will be higher theses flies were shot at the same time of day and the ISO was 800. dawn always has lower light levels so ISO-1600 may be needed.

Macro Photo of a Fly with Dew Drops

Different Kinds of Bugs. In the dawns early light you may encounter lots of different kinds of bugs and they will all react a bit differently to your presence, some don’t seen to care, others will hide behind a leaf or twig and some will shoot off for distant places.

One of my favorite things to shoot is Damsel Flies and they are very small. They will fly off if your shadow crosses over them but stay still and they will return, sometimes. The photo below of a Green Damsel Fly was shot at f19. 1/25th sec at ISO 400. I shoot my bugs mostly in a local park where there are many varieties of local flowers and plants, but look carefully as it is a very small world.

Photo of a Damsel Fly and Dew Drops.

Bigger Bugs. Some bugs are not that small like the fully grown Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers at over 4 inches long they can be shot with any kind of lens. The Grasshoppers in the photo below were taken with my 70-300mm at f16. 1/80th sec. at ISO-400. In the middle of the day so very bright light. I shot at -2 of exposure compensation to kill some of the light and to increases the color depth.

Photo of two Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers shot at f19 very clear and sharp

Big bugs like these Grasshoppers can be seen all over the Everglades during July and August but in the spring time they are the black ones like in the photo at the top of this page. They seem to appear when they are about half an inch long and grow quite quickly.

They have this unusual behavior of climbing onto each others backs and getting carried around, maybe just lazy, who knows, but they are not mating as both of these are males.

Dragonflies. Another bug that is nice to shoot is the dragonfly and they come in all sizes and colors depending on where you live. In the Everglades we have then from about half an inch up to 3 inches in length. Sometimes they will stay still for your shot other times they spook very easily. But you will notice that they have their own favorite perches where they like to sit, so if it flies off wait to see if it comes back again.

Photo of a Dragonfly shot in the Everglades

 Shooting Bigger Bugs. Remember these bugs will probably will not let you shove a macro lens in their faces so maybe a 200/300mm is best for these insects. If you are buying a 200/300mm lens look to see if it has a macro setting as they come in very handy for bigger bugs. I have an old Tamron 300mm Macro and it takes excellent pictures almost as good as my Sony 70-300 G lens certainly good enough for posting to the web.

Photo of a Dragonfly at rest

Macro is Fun. All kinds of macro photography is fun, it just requires a bit more in the field of patience, getting up at dawn and taking your time to get the focus correct. Focus just has to be tack sharp on the main point of your subject the rest can be out of focus and this sometimes make for the better shot. There are lots of more detailed facts on shooting bugs to found on the internet but I hope this gives you the inspiration to go out and do it and I hope you have fun, post your shots to me on G+ link is below.

More photos of bugs on my True Portraits Website

Join me on Google Plus for Buggy Friday

Join me on Google Plus for Paintography

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Paintography of Great White Egrets at Dawn.

 Paintography is about using a piece of software called Pixel Bender by Adobe. But I believe it only works with CS4/5. You can download it from the Adobe website and there is a small Paintography Tutorial and some videos here on my True Portraits website.

 The photos above and below were shot in the Florida Everglades near a place called Sweetwater Strand it is off the Loop road which is off the Tamiami Trail or US41 between Naples and Miami. The Loop road is a 32 mile scenic drive through the Florida Everglades. Best at dawn for the softest light if you are into photography. Be sure to go slow and keep your eyes open, not all wildlife is obvious.

Paintography of an Egret and Black Water Reflection.

Of course there are lots of other things that make good paintography subjects, just look around my blog here or pop over to my website at True Portraits all of my photos are paintography. But I love photographing the swamp birds, like Egrets and Herons.

Also remember when shooting white birds to get your exposure correct use spot metering and expose for the birds white feathers if you don’t you will get a washed out picture where the white has no details. Spot focus and spot meter all your shots.

Great Blue Heron with a Crayfish for lunch.

 When shooting the birds like the Great Blue Heron above, you must be as patient as he is. Don’t just pop off a shot and then go on somewhere else, wait for him to make a strike and catch him eating lunch, or maybe wait for for him to take off and catch him in flight.

Great Blue Heron taking off

 Be sure to watch out for the smaller birds like the Little Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets and try to get into a real good position to take the shot as composition is the key to a good photo. Sometimes you just have to grab a shot and hope for the best like the Herons above and below. It is usually the back end you get as it fly’s away from you, but they do not usually fly very far, just follow and try again.

Paintography of a Great Blue Heron coming into land

If you can try to catch the birds reflection in the water, one of the reasons why dawn is a good time to shoot there is usually less wind to ripple the water. And the Everglades has black water so reflections are usually pretty neat like the Little Blue Heron below

Paintography of a Little Blue Heron and Reflection

Lots more birds on my website here. Paintography of Everglades Birds

And join in with my #WadingBirdWednesday photo theme on Google Plus.

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Shooting into the sun by diffusing the light.

The first thing to remember is the sun is very bright in the middle of the day and should be avoided if at all possible. Shooting at dawn is by far the best time to shoot the light. The picture above is taken just after sunup and I have diffused the already soft light by shooting through the grass and using a 10x20mm lens at f7.1 ISO 100 at 1/60sec. And as you can see the sun flare is still white, white means bright. But the foreground is relatively dark.

If I compensated for the bright light, by that I mean exposed for the light, the foreground would be very dark indeed. So I expose for the middle ground and I get dramatic light differences. It also helps to have interesting details in the shot, like the little spider webs.

Shooting the morning light. Keep the camera in shadow.

Another tip for shooting into the light is to try and keep the camera in shadow and avoid pointing it directly at the sun. In the shot above I am in the shadow of the palm tree on the left and the idea of the shot was to get the awesome dawns red light beams hitting the grass and bringing out the fall colors and textures, again very strong lights and darks make a powerful image.

An accidental lens flare works out well in this composition

Keeping the camera in the dark so to speak will help stop very bad lens flares from ruining your shots. But sometimes a lens flare can be a wonderful thing but it is hard to control and if it turns out good it is an accident. As in the sunset shot above taken on the beach. The lens flare here is accidental but it compliments the shape of the driftwood and helps fill in the empty space on the left.

In the shot of the Naples Pier below I have diffused the sun by waiting for it to be partly obscured by the cloud you can do the same with a building, a tree or even a person. There is also a way for you to get a better exposure and that is to take separate shots of the light and dark areas by using the Bracketing mode of your DSLR camera this will take 3/5 or even 7 frames then use software like Adobe to combine them into one HDR photo.

Diffuse the suns light by partly obscuring it with a cloud

Exposure is the top and bottom of all good photographs and getting the exposure right takes practice. In your DSLR camera you have an exposure control that can be seen in the view finder it has a ’0′ in the center and goes + or – on either side. getting the indicator in the center, the ’0′ indicates a correct exposure but the practice come in when a correct exposure is not what you want.

Being creative with exposure leads to a better understanding of the light and creates more dramatic photos. As a general rule of thumb shooting at -1 exposure compensation will increase the strength of colors in your photos and is a good rule to follow. Practice with exposure compensation so you can see what it does to the photos. I like to shoot at -2 because I like dramatic light differences.

Using exposure to create silhouettes of trees

When you expose for the brightest part of the picture the darker areas will go very dark to black and create silhouettes as in the shot above had I exposed for the darker trees the sky would be a lot brighter and would of had a washed out look to it. Shooting the light in sunrise and sunset shots is always better if you have some clouds in the sky, clouds can add a lot of drama to a photograph.

Use close up focus and a shallow depth of field and a wide angle lens

In the photo above I have used a wide angle lens a 10x20mm to get a close up of the flower and grass but to also get the rising sun in the same picture. By getting down onto the ground and with the camera pointed slightly downwards I was able to get the suns flare with out it burning out the shot.

By using a shallow depth of field at f4.5 ISO 200 at 1/125 focus was kept to the flower and everything else gets blurred out. A similar action for the shot below at f4 ISO 800 at 1/60 but this time shooting straight into the sun that was diffused in the distance by some grass this kept the distance and the colors very soft.

Shoot into the sun with a shallow depth of field

Sometime it is difficult to focus your camera when shooting into the sun so by putting your hand over the top of the lens to cut out the glare can help you get the focus, if you are still not sure then use a higher f stop to give you some leeway in depth of field. Or try to gauge the distance to your subject and then move your camera to focus on something at about the same distance but away from the sun, then you can lock the focus and come back to your shot.

Close up of a flower at dawn with diffused sunlight

 You can even diffuse the sunlight through the flower you are shooting as in the shot above, by getting further away from the flower and zooming in close with my 70×300 set at 70mm f4 at ISO 100 at 1/125sec the rising sun is obscured by the flower it self and the light glows through the petals.

So there you have some simple tips for shooting the light. If you want lore detailed info on this the web is full of it, so experiment as practice makes perfect.

More photos can be seen on my website. “Dawn Photos” and “Spider Web Grass Photos”

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if you are a newbie this does not have anything to do with taking your cloths off. Your shiny new DSLR can probably shoot in jpeg and in Raw mode. And so you will have Googled this and found it is a personal choice. Some photographers will say it is the only way to shoot and others like myself will tell you, do not waste your time, your storage space or your money.

The biggest mistake I see in photos is bad composition and Raw will not help this at all. The second biggest mistake I see is bad exposure and shooting Raw can help to repair this. BUT. It is better to learn to shoot correct exposure in the first place than try to repair the photo afterwards.

What is a Raw file and what is a jpeg file? 

When your camera takes a photo in Raw mode it keeps all of the information captured in the shot. Raw files are a lot bigger in size and are not technically an image file at all, you can not view them on your PC like a jpeg which is a true image file. You need a Raw file viewer and the Raw image will look real bad to you anyway, so you have to spend a lot of time processing every image just to find out if it is worth keeping or not. And no one shoots all keepers, in fact 95% or more of a photographers images get deleted.

Raw is not a true image file. Raw is a data file as it contains all of the data your camera captured and you will need to buy special software to get it out again and turn it into an image file just like a jpeg!!! If that seems rather dumb to you it does to me also.

JPEG is a true image file. When you shoot in jpeg mode the camera chooses what information it needs to keep to make a very good image and then discards the rest, so the image file is smaller.

Is there any difference in image quality? If both Raw and jpeg shots were taken of the same subject with correct exposure and sharp focus there will be no discernible difference between them except for the huge difference in file size. This is a fact.

Raw files take up more space on your memory card and I prefer to use the space to take more pictures.

Raw files take more storage space on your hard-drive. I prefer to spend less money on storage hard drives.

Raw files take a lot longer to process, I prefer to use the time to go shoot more photos.

When would I shoot Raw files.  If someone is paying you to take photos and getting paid will depend on the quality of the photos, hedge your bets and shoot in Raw+jpeg. If the jpeg image is lacking in some areas the Raw file might just get you out of the hole.

If you are not getting paid to take the photos them then just save your self the space, time, and money and shoot in fine quality jpeg.

I have tried shooting in Raw quite a few times especially right after a known pro photographer tells me I should and I have NEVER, EVER found it to be better, in fact I find it to be a complete waste of time, effort and money.

I have a lot of images on the web in lots of places and NOT ONE of them was shot in Raw.

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