Shooting Flowers

Flower photography is probably the first step many people take, in their journey from becoming a trigger happy point and shoot, to an amateur photographer. Flowers are beautiful, and we can take stunning flower photographs quite easily. To have a good flower shoot, I would recommend using a camera with "aperture priority" (or full manual), so that you have more control on the depth of field.

Few small tips: however, be prepared to break them at your will.

• Use a shallow depth of field
  This will make your flower stand out from its background, and also create interesting bokeh in the background


• Take an unusual viewpoint
  If you shoot flowers at an angle in which we normally don't see them, it will create a stunning composition.


• Shoot on a black background
  Black background will make your flowers more vivid and powerful. For example, you can hold a black cardboard or cloth in the background. Being a purist though, I do not follow this tip myself: if a black background is not available naturally, I shoot with the available background


• Dew drops on flowers improve the beauty of the flower
  Again, though personally I have never created artificial dew, you can do it by spraying some water on the flower before you shoot
  

Now, some of my flower shots.

In this photo I have broken the convention that a flower should be shot in color. In the original shot, the flower was white on a green background. Converting it to black and white has created more impact I believe.



I have shot this one with a black background. I framed the flowers against a black water tank.



I have shot this one against an overexposed sky as background, turning it into white. The depth of field is not very shallow, so the leaves are also in partial focus.



This was taken with a prosumer "point and shoot" camera. Olympus SP510UZ, which I used before buying my Sony A300 SLR.

From Blog

This is a hibiscus flower shot in the warm evening sunlight during sunset.

Let me know if you liked this post. Show me some of your own flower shots

Using bokeh as a background element

"Bokeh" is a fancy term for blur!!! As defined by Wikipedia, bokeh refers to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field
In an image we want our subject to stand out from its surroundings. Hence a bokeh will remove distracting backgrounds from claiming attention in photos. Many creative photographers will use bokeh as the main subject, but in this post I will stick to examples where I have used it as background element.

First one to start with is a portrait of my wife. The background is busy, but I have blurred it out to keep the attention on my subject.

From Blog

The second is an extreme example of a Bokeh. The entire background is made completely blurred with the subject in focus. This is one shot I am very proud of: (View it in large in my Flickr photo album)


The third one is also a flower shot with small bokeh in foreground and a larger more out of focus bokeh in background.



The last in today's series is a planned treatment of mine. The bokeh is not very asthetically pleasing, but I believe it blends well with the subject and my treatment.

Let me know how you feel about these photos and show me yours.