"Earth Laughs In Flowers"
I love that quote by Emerson. And the earth is laughing now, so thought I’d take a minute a do a tip of the day on photographing wildflowers. Not a lot of hard and fast rules here, but a few general things to think about when you are composing your images.
Shutter speed and aperture – IF it is a breezy day and the flowers are moving as you try to zoom in on them, a fast shutter speed (at least 1/200) will help to avoid motion blurring. Also play with your f-stops to decide when you want most everything in focus (use f-stops of 8 to 22), or just one flower with the background blurred (try f-stops of 2.8 to 5.6). There is a sample below from my rose bush using two different apertures to show this difference.
Photograph from different levels – Again it depends on the look you want, but as a general rule if you are photographing small flowers (like the poppies shown below) you will want to get down low so that the flowers become more prominent. If the background is not good you can even get down lower and get the bug’s eye view with sky behind the flowers. But if you want to get just one bloom completely in focus you will want to make sure that the camera is parallel to the bloom (like the close up of the rose which was shot from directly above the bloom). So move around the subject and play with what works best to capture the look YOU want.
Most importantly, leave no trace that you were there. Leave the flowers just as you found them, and try not to trample the plants around you just to get the shot. That way we can all enjoy them while they last, and have our images to enjoy once they disappear for the year. Enjoy!
Greater depth of field using small aperture (f-stop 1/16) Aperture wide open blurs background so flower is clearly the focus here.
I wanted the greater depth of field here so the mountains AND poppies were in focus, so I stopped down to f-22.
Sometimes a "Bugs Eye" view is best (there was a road and cars in the background that I didn't want to see)
I love extreme close ups! But try to keep the lens parallel to the subject on something like this.
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