Photographing flowers

[Pippatee]

May 22, 2010 at 12:04 pm

Have developed an interest in photographing flowers lately … any advice would be appreciated ..

here are my latest efforts …

C&C Please …

Phil :)

[miki g]

May 22, 2010 at 7:13 pm

Hi Phil.
Photographing flowers would not really be my thing, but sometimes I am also tempted to photograph wildflowers in a natural setting rather than cut flowers from the florists. I like #1. The composition works well as it’s off-centre & the shooting angle is good as it keeps most of the head in focus. A smaller aperture will sharpen this even more, but not too much or the background will begin to come into focus too. I find that water droplets can work wonders on flower shots, as it seems to inject life into the shots. Also if shooting in the garden, a ringflash or fill-in can help to freeze movement if it’s breezy.
I think that the shooting angle in #2 makes it very difficult to achieve a sharp shot due to the limited DOF when shooting up close, but I still like it as the hairs on the stem add interest to this shot. Well done

[Pippatee]

May 23, 2010 at 9:11 am

Morning Miki,

thanks for the detailled critique …

I love the water idea .. I’ll invest in a water mister to help with that ,

I was aware of the DoF issues , the first was shot at f14, and the second at f10, so there’s room for improvement for sharpness, although I do like the depth the focus brings to the shots …perhaps it’s too much of a tradeoff?

I was also looking at Stacking images,

http://www.digitalgrin.com/showthread.php?t=61316″ onclick=”window.open(this.href);return false;

have you ever tried this?

I dont thnk that it works on 16-bit files tho, so printing may be compromised?

Anyway, thanks again for taking the time to give good advice,

Phil

[miki g]

May 23, 2010 at 8:58 pm

Hi Phil.
I was interested in photo / focus stacking a while back & tried out CZM. It isn’t as simple as it looks & I didn’t manage to get any decent results from it. It could possibly work with a bit of practice though. :)

[stcstc]

May 23, 2010 at 10:03 pm

there was a cool article a while ago in one of the photo mags

a guy was doing flower photos, the cool thing was he was using a piece of white perspex behind them with a light to give very very clean white backgrounds to the images, almost like the kind of drawings u see in a book

[Pippatee]

May 23, 2010 at 10:37 pm

I’m liking that idea Steve … If you could find a link I’d appreciate it…

Now added to my shopping list .. White Perspex … :-)

[sndipo]

May 28, 2010 at 9:45 am

Very very nice! :)

[Pippatee]

May 31, 2010 at 7:25 am

Thanks sndipo …