How to photograph a single flower

08 January, 2013

Photographing flowers is a part of nature photography. Both winter and spring seasons are the best times for flower photography during golden hours or on a cloudy day.

WITH A few tips, one can take reasonably good photographs of lowers. A good photographer knows gardens are filled with all kinds of distractions like a fence, other flowers, brick-linings, walls, etc. A decision is needed to be made to exclude these elements from your shot.

If you want to remove distractive elements while photographing a flower, either move yourself to find a new angle to shoot from that has a less distracting background or crop them out of the frame by going for a tighter framing of the flower either by using a zoom or moving physically closer to it.

Use wider aperture to narrow the depth of field and to make elements in the foreground and background more and more out of focus. If the flower plant is in a pot move it to a new location for the shot so as to have plain dark background.

Sometimes going in extra close and focusing on a part of the flower can create wonderful and unusual images that take on an abstract quality. So, look for contrasting colors, patterns and textures for this purpose.

Sharp focus is important in flower Macro photography which can be a real challenge on a breezy day. Try to avoid the use of a flash as it is likely to wash the photograph. If the light is too less, use a diffuser over the flash for a more natural looking shot.

The inset photograph shows a macro-set tight photograph a flower with a bee sitting on it. The distracting elements of other plants in the garden have been cropped for a tighter shot.