Shooting Flowers Outside

Today I would like to talke a little more about flowers. Taking photos of flowers outside can be fun and here are some tips to make it more enjoyable:

1. Find a day when it isn't windy.
2. I prefer a cloudy day and avoid the harsh sun (earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon works good).
3. Bring a tripod and a cable release (or use the timer on your camera to trigger the shutter)
4. Watch out for distracting backgrounds. Look around in your view finder. Often you will need to move the camera a couple of times to find a nice shot.
5. Bring a reflector or some white cardboard. It often comes in handy to kick some light back into the shadows.
6. Get to know the depth of field for your lens. A shallow depth of field generally works better to blur out distracting backgrounds (but too shallow and your subject may not all be in focus.
7. I bring different color cardboard (I like black) and will have a friend hold it behind the flower at times (good way to get rid of distracting backgrounds).
8. Take a number of photos from different angles.
9. Look at your histogram to make sure your flowers do not have blown out highlights.
10. Enjoy.

The photo below is out of the camera. I did some adjustments in photoshop to get the final image above. Again, I ran Midnight black action (see prior post) to get something I like.

If you want to learn more about depth of field and even download for free a both a depth of field calculator and a hyperfocal distance calculator, check out http://www.dofmaster.com/. There are a lot of good information on depth of field there.

Flowers with a Twist

I like taking photos of flowers (there I said it). Where I live there are an abundance of flowers and I found taking photos of flowers I have picked is a good way to pass a rainy day. Photographing flowers inside also means no worries about wind to blur your photos due to the flower moving. The flower above was shot with available light in my room. The dark background was achieved by putting some black fabric behind the flower and out of the sunlight coming in through the windows. If the light falling on the background is 3-stops less than the light falling on the subject you will get a black background. Note: try this with someone standing in a doorway where light falls on them but the light in the doorway is darker (instant black background). I used my 100-400 lens for this photo (no macro lens used). In photoshop, I ran an action called 'Midnight Black" which gave the photo a look I liked. You can download for free (along with a lot of other free actions) at www.atncentral.com/downloads.