Flowers

fine art photography techniques and tips - Vandana Bajikar

When you take flower in your hand and really look at it, its your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in city rush around, so they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not – Georgia O’Keeffe

With so may colors and shapes possibilities are endless.

• • • • • • • Every flower is unique Their look and feel is different Same flower looks different in different lights and seasons Textures Colors Shapes And so on…….

Create your own garden – creating your own garden is one of the best ways to have nearly endless source of subjects.

Go to the local parks or botanical gardens.

Get the pots of flowers to put in your house.

Worst case, peep in neighbors garden 

Techniques

• There are number of techniques for photographing flowers.

• Some will produce more literal images and others very abstract.

• The approach totally depends on YOU, what YOU want to show your viewer and YOUR creativity.

Flower Portraits

• If you are new to the flower photography, this is the best way to start.

• No need of pricy macro lenses or special lenses.

• A medium telephoto some where in the range of 50-150mm is a great, and will do a job for you.

• Perspective: The angle in which you shoot to make your flower stand out and give that impact. Each position or perspective will communicate a different feel.

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Blur background • Can include one or several flowers. The key to balanced composition is pleasing to the viewer’s eye, is to isolate some part of the cluster of flowers and make it main focal point.

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• Depth of Field (DOF) • DOF refers to how much of the image, from foreground to background, is in focus.

• With flower portraits, a shallow DOF is usually the best option because it isolates the main subject from the image.

• It also creates the soft feel and mood.

• The aperture (f-stop) range generally between 2.8-6.3 for shallow DOF.

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Light Up your Flower Portraits • Lighting can take an otherwise ordinary looking image and turn it into something special.

• Side lighting • Back lighting

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Focal Length • In addition to using shallow DOF, isolating the main flower from the background can also be achieved by using a long focal length lens.

• The combination of longer focal length and choice of f-stop can create lovely, soft shapes of color which can compliment main subject.

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Selective Focus • Using very shallow DOF throws the background totally soft, and makes the main subject pop-up.

• The key to this technique is to focus on a flower or few flowers in the foreground, allowing the small f-stop or the long lens to throw the background out of focus.

• Or, you can reverse the same…keep background in focus and throw forwground out of focus.

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Indoor vs. Outdoor - Should you shoot indoors or outdoors?

Outdoors: • Your biggest challenge is wind (if you are willing to ignore bugs and mosquitoes) • Light sources and condition – the time you shoot outdoors • And how to use those varying light to get special magical effect on your flower

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Outdoors: • The overcast or rainy days are absolutely superb to shoot flowers.

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Indoors: • Some days photographing outside is just not an option.

• No wind • No need of clamps or stabilizing the flower • Use of natural ambient light coming from window – This light results in natural soft gentle look to your subject • Do not use flash

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Indoors: • Great of choice of backgrounds – no need to purchase lots of backgrounds. Here is the simple trick might work for you.

-Get your flower setup in front of your computer screen.

-Turn on the screen and open the photoshop or any software which will allow you to create blank canvas.

-Make your canvas size to pretty much fill the whole screen.

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Indoors: -Then use the fill function and fill in the blank canvas with whatever color you want. Choose something which will compliment the flower.

When you find right combination, place the flower and start shooting.

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Composition: In photography there are some rules (I prefer to call them guidelines).

To begin with it is a good idea to learn them to develop good habits But as you get experienced you learn how to “break the rules” and still make wonderfully composed images.

Photography is an art, and it is up to YOU to decide to decide what rules you will and won’t follow.

LET YOUR VISION AND CREATIVITY GUIDE YOU.

MACRO Photography

Many flowers have intricate details such as petals and reproductive structures that can be captured using a macro lens or close-up photography equipment.

Macro lens allows you to get very close to fine details, as well as you can step back a little and get the complete flower with great details

Working a Subject

• This is something is mostly missed by the photographers while taking flower photos.

• This is almost similar to scouting in landscape photography.

• Make sure you spend a time to photograph the same subject from different perspectives. Different DOF, different compositions.

• Try different techniques like shooting thru subject, overlays. You’ll surprise yourself.

The Really Creative Stuff

• Techniques like Panning, zooming, multiple exposure, soft focus, image overlay can produce some incredible creative images.

• The key here is the willingness to experiment. Work out of your comfort zone.

The Really Creative Stuff

Panning This involves moving the camera in certain direction during a long exposure.

The key is to use sufficiently low shutter speed to create a blur, yet not completely blur the image so that the subject is unrecognizable.

The Really Creative Stuff

Zooming Press the shutter release, hold the camera steady, but twist the barrel of your lens to zoon into the flowers. Different setting of zoom, and speed will create different effect.

The Really Creative Stuff

Multiple Exposure This is mainly for the abstracts and impressionist effect.

There is a function in the most latest camera gears to setup the multiple exposure. The key is to how many shots you want, and how you move the camera.

If your camera do not have the built-in function, same effect can be created manually using photoshop.

The Really Creative Stuff

Image Overlay This is to superimpose one image over another.

This can be done in photoshop, but the Nikon cameras have this function built-in the menu.

The Really Creative Stuff

Bokeh effect – aesthetic use of light Getting those beautiful light patterns due to large aperture

The Really Creative Stuff

Focus? Really?

How about purposely creating the out of focus soft images??

There is only you and your camera. It is a creative art. The only limitations are

YOU

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