Learning Center
Macro

Flowers are sexy. In a botanical sense that’s quite literally true – flowers are plants’ reproductive organs, after all. And we humans have always picked up on their sex appeal. Throughout history, flowers have been linked with romance and love. With their intricate shapes, colors, patterns, and scents, blossoms are in many ways the definition of beauty. Whether you find them in a forest or field, in a garden, or in a pot on your window sill, these little marvels of pollination offer some incredible photo opportunities. But flower photography does come with some unique challenges. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Sharpness only goes so far
The defining characteristic of flower photography, the main thing, the big issue, is the shallow depth-of-field that is part of doing macro work. It’s just an optical fact of life that the closer we focus a lens, the less depth of field we have.

For instance, if I shoot a landscape with a 50mm lens, focused at infinity, with an aperture setting of f/16, my depth of field could be measured in miles. However, if I use that same lens and same aperture, but focus on something only 3 inches away – something like a flower – the zone of sharpness extends only a few millimeters. For that reason, focus becomes an extremely critical issue when shooting small subjects. More often than not, it’s impossible to get the entire flower in focus – so we have to choose which part of the blossom is the most important to us, visually, and focus carefully on that.

One way to help with this issue is to try to align your camera with the flower, as much as possible. That is, make the film (or sensor) plane – that is, the back of your camera – parallel with the plane of the subject. If the two are aligned perfectly, a large depth of field isn’t necessary.

Look for the best of the bunch.
More often than not, flowers are found in groups. Take a few minutes to examine them closely. Look for the freshest one, without wilted edges, blemishes, or holes made by insects with the munchies. That’s the one you want to focus on.

Get down and dirty.
In my experience, flowers are seldom found at eye level. So it doesn’t make much sense to photograph them from that position. You’ll get a much stronger picture if you get down on its level – even if that means getting your knees a little dirty.

Be aware of the background.
Bright highlights or cluttered tangles of vegetation can distract the viewer’s eye from the subject. So make it a habit to always check the edges and corners of the frame for visual distractions.

Using a telephoto zoom sometimes helps, something like a 70 – 300mm, as opposed to a lens in the 28 –80mm range. Longer lenses have a narrower angle of view than short focal lengths, making it easier to control the background – simply because a longer lens doesn’t include as much of it.

Make it a good light.
Landscape photographers like to shoot early or late in the day because that’s the most flattering kind of light: in the middle of a sunny day, the highlights are too bright, and the shadows too dark, for film or digital media to record detail in both areas. The same principle applies when shooting flowers. But the difference is, with small subjects we can easily control and/or modify the light.

For example, you can use your own body to shade your subject, if necessary. I’ve even used my camera bag, placed strategically, to shade the background and get rid of distracting hot spots.

Or you can use a diffuser, placed next to the flower, to soften the light. These handy tools are made of translucent fabric mounted on a flexible hoop which can be folded to fit in your camera bag. Several companies make these devices, in various sizes and shapes. My diffuser, made by Photoflex, is 24” in diameter, and 9” when folded.

Another similar tool for modifying harsh light is a reflector. This is used to bounce light onto the subject to make it stand out from the background, or to fill in the shadows. Like the diffusers, they are mounted on flexible frames which can be easily stored in your bag. I use a small reflector made by Westcott, which is gold on one side and white on the other (I like the gold side, to simulate early morning light). It’s 12” in diameter, and folds down to a 5” disc.

Use a tripod.
When we magnify a small subject such as a flower, we also magnify movement – not only by the subject, but the camera’s movement as well. (And yes, flowers can be moving subjects. Even a slight puff of wind, for example, can blow your subject right out of the frame!) There’s not much we can do about the wind, other than exercise a great deal of patience.

But we can eliminate the movement of the camera. That’s what a tripod is for. Even though it’s a clumsy tool, it will make your photos sharper. Guaranteed. And because we’re always trying to maximize the limited depth of field in macro photography, we usually shoot with a small lens aperture. This means we’ve got to use a slow shutter speed. Many of my flower pictures are done with shutter speeds in the 1 second range: impossible to handhold.

And as if that weren’t enough reason to use a tripod, there’s even more: tripods give us control over our compositions. When doing close-up work, even the slightest change in camera position or angle has a huge effect on the picture. Working from a stable tripod forces us to slow down, and lets us compose our photo in a methodical way that just isn’t possible when hand holding the camera.

On a tripod, we are free to use slow shutter speeds, we can carefully evaluate the light, fine tune the composition and focus, and check for distractions in the background. And still have one hand free to hold a diffuser or reflector, if needed. In short, tripods are our friends.

Getting close.
Of course, all this is beside the point if you don’t have a lens that will let you focus close. And not all of them do.

Some zoom lenses have a “macro” setting which will allow for close focusing. The Tamron 70-300mm, for instance, will focus to ½ life-size – meaning you can fill the frame with a subject as small as 2” X 3”. Tamron’s 28 – 300mm Di and 18 – 200mm Di II zooms also allow you to do close-up work.

But if you find that you really enjoy doing macro, you’ll eventually want to invest in a true “macro lens”. These high quality optics allow you to focus down to a 1:1 reproduction ratio, meaning you can fill the frame with a subject measuring 1” X 1.5”. Tamron has two macro lenses – a 90mm and a 180mm – as part of their Di line of optics. Both are very impressive.

(For more about these lenses, see Jason Schneider’s excellent article “The Magical World Of Macro Photography” here on Pro Learning Center.)

If you’ve never tried your hand at photographing flowers, you really owe it to yourself to do so. Flowers are one of nature’s most beautiful ideas. They are definitely the closest things to a sexy supermodel that I’ll ever shoot. (And though I’ve photographed hundreds, maybe thousands of flowers, not one has ever asked for a modeling fee.) The old proverb says we should “stop and smell the roses”. I’d suggest we take that advice one step further: stop and shoot them.

This gorgeous blossom was photographed at an orchid show during the field session of a 2006 Tamron workshop, using the Tamron 180mm Di macro lens.

Flowers are sexy, and orchids are arguably the most blatantly provocative species of all.

Another photo from my Tamron 2006 workshop. There were 1000’s of these blossoms growing inside the conservatory where we were shooting. Thanks to the wall of windows nearby, and glass ceiling overhead, the available light was both bright and soft: perfect for capturing these intricate colors and patterns.

I focused on the center of this flower, with my aperture set at f/22 for maximum depth of field. But as you can see, that still wasn’t enough to keep the petals on either side in focus.

By changing camera position just slightly, I aligned the camera plane more closely with the subject plane. Still focused on the center of the flower, still shooting at f/22, but now the edges are much sharper.

There were probably hundreds of these trilliums in the part of the Smoky Mountains where my workshop group was shooting…

…But obviously, some of them made better photo subjects than others. It pays to spend a few minutes looking for the best specimen in the bunch.

This was shot with a 105mm macro lens. The Dutchman’s Breeches look pretty good from this angle, but the sky in the upper right of the frame really pulls your eye away from my intended subject. So I changed lenses…

…and moved further away from the flower. This version was done with a 70-300mm zoom lens, set at 300mm.The longer lens has a narrower angle of view, which gave me more control over the background.

I found this Day Lily, all by itself at the edge of the woods, just as the sun was going down. The sky was thick with deep gray clouds, and a light rain had just begun to fall. In short, it was dark. My shutter speed was 10 seconds. Yes, tripods are our friends.