Tips For Making Great Flower Photos

One of the most popular subjects for photographers is the wide array of flowers all around us. It's hard to resist the beauty, symmetry, and outstanding colors that can be found in the flower world.

But some flower images just don't look very professional. They look like someone just went out in their garden, pointed a camera at a bunch of flowers and pressed the shutter without much thought about the image beforehand. And you know what? That is what often does happen, producing flower photos that are static and boring. Ugh!

Since flowers are some of my favorite subjects, I'll list some of my best tips to help make sure that you get the best flower images possible. Here they are -

• As is the case with most other subjects, get in close with flowers. Often it's best to just include one flower at a time, and really get in tight to be able to view the flower without other distractions. Sometimes it's not even necessary to include the whole flower in the frame. Maybe just a part of the flower will do the job, and cropping tight often provides a fresh viewpoint of the flower you are photographing.
• Speaking of distractions, make sure that you remove anything from the image that does not contribute to the beauty of the main flower you are highlighting in your shot. Of course, letting other objects appear in the frame with your flower is fine as long as they don't dominate the scene or take away from your main subject.
• Pay lots of attention to the background. It's often a good idea to keep the background as uncluttered as possible to focus the majority of the viewer's attention on the flower itself. I like single color backgrounds, or at least colors that do not necessarily compete with the flower for attention. Dark backgrounds will often make the flower's colors really pop.
• Pay attention to depth of field. What is in focus and how sharp it is, matters a lot in macro photography, so experiment around with various apertures to see what effect you get throughout the image with each one.

Here is a flower I took just recently. In fact, it's one that my wife brought home for our front yard. I loved the colors so I knew that it would command attention. I placed a black cardboard background behind it to make the color really shine, and then experimented with several aperture settings while using natural daylight for lighting. I took several shots from different angles which produced different objects in the background whenever I changed my view. This is my favorite image from the group of photos I took:

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