Home Photography Tips #6 - Flowers
Moving away from people and portraits, today as we're going to have a look at flowers seeing as we're all making the most of the nice weather. If you're fotunate enough to have a garden then head outside and explore. Not to worry if you don't have any fancy plants growing, most lawns will have daisies and they can still make for great shots. If you live in a flat then this can be applied to any house plant you may have.
Let's get started!
Quick Tips
- Wide aperture for blurry backgrounds
- Contrast - this can be mixing flowers of different colour or having light & dark in your shot
- Avoid shooting in the wind
- Place a single flower in front of a plain background for a nice arty shot
- Play around with the colour settings for different effects
- Spray with water - the droplets will add an interesting feature (below)
- Include birds and insects (if you're quick enough!)
- Get right in to the grass to get an insects eye view
- Include objects in foreground for perspective and colour
Some examples of colour effects showing the original and the colour changes -
With a plain background -
Shoot low down in the grass
I've taken some similar shots with my Canon 5D Mark iii and Galaxy S9+ to compare the results. As you can see the 5Diii gives a much softer look due to the very wide aperture (f/1.8) on my 50mm lens even when using the Live Focus mode at maximum on the phone to blur the background. With most modern smart phones though you can still get incredibly detailed results.
And if you get a keeper you can proudly show it off as your new screen saver!
Check out the previous tips -
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