USMake Your Photography Blossom With Spring Flowers
Spring is always a welcome change from the cold of winter, and while winter offers some great opportunities for photographers, the warmer weather brings some new subjects to capture. The increased sunshine, bursts of fresh colour and pretty landscapes make spring an inspiring time to capture natures renewing beauty.
Spring brings blooming flowers and growing leaf shoots which is a stark difference to the winter months, offering some fresh perspective for your photographs. While the weather brightens, it is the perfect time to get out and about with your camera and capture some of the new natural beauty that is blooming. Get yourself on a teen photography course or photography workshop for kids and explore everything that spring has to offer for budding photographers.
The new season brings lots of bright beauty along with it, including new flowers that are perfect for capturing with your camera. Flowers are beautiful and come in a wide variety of colours, shapes and patterns that can be shot up close or within a pretty landscape.
Whether they are growing in a forest, field or your back garden, flowers begin to bloom everywhere in Spring. Capturing these flowers in all their natural beauty can be difficult, and there are various tips and tricks you can use to achieve the best image possible.
Photography courses online will teach you the basics of capturing nature during spring time, but you can also use the following techniques to learn how to get some amazing flower snaps this season.
Play With Perspectives
Most photographers, both amateur and experienced, make the mistake of just putting the camera to their eye and snapping away. This can result in images that are a bit repetitive and boring, as the natural instinct is to shoot at eye level.
Get creative with your perspectives to change up your images and create a unique look. Try lots of different things, like various angles other than just straight into the flower. Think about an ant or a bird’s perspective to give your images a different edge, try putting your camera on the floor pointing upwards towards the flower or angled downwards from above.
When thinking about your perspectives also remember to isolate your subject so as not to make your photo cluttered or with an ugly background. Flowers are beautiful all on their own and images of them should accentuate that beauty as much as possible instead of clutter it with other things.
Compose your imagesso that the flowers are the predominant focus and avoid anything that could be distracting within the image.
Lillie’s Top Tips: Always remember the rule of thirds, as this applies to flowers just as much as it does to landscapes. Try not to put your flower, or any subject for that matter, directly in the middle of your shot.
Think About Lighting
Springtime is not all sunshine and blue skies every day, and when photographing flowers, a cloudy day can be a real advantage. An overcast day offers a soft light that can be perfect for complimenting the delicacy of the flower petals. No shadows or harsh bright lighting can make it much easier to get a good exposure to your image.
A teen photography course or photography workshop for kids like Brighton in Spring can teach you all the techniques needed for using the spring sunlight to work for your images.
Another type of lighting that works really well when photography flowers in Spring is backlight. If you light your flowers from behind, the translucent nature of the petals causes them to get a soft glow which really stands out in a photo. The best time of day for capturing backlit flowers is in the evening as the sun is low on the horizon. This time of day offers a nice warm light for your flower and the rest of the image.
Lillie’s Top Tips: Try photographing against the sun to create some dynamic flower silhouettes. Sometimes using a flower to block out the sunlight can result in some wonderful and unusual effects.
Make Your Camera Settings Work For You
Many photography courses online will teach you the basic settings and mechanics of a camera and how you can utilise them in your own photography. Camera settings are powerful and can often give your photographs some amazing effects and finishes.
When you are shooting the natural beauty of Spring and the flowers in the wild, make sure your settings are correct for giving you the best final image. Try using a shallow depth of field when capturing flowers as this will make the main part of your image sharp and focused and leave the background soft and out of focus.
You can achieve this by using the flower setting or a small aperture like f3.5 / f4 for close-ups with blurred backgrounds. When you do use a shallow depth of field, you should always make sure that part of the image is sharp and in focus. The best way to achieve this is to use a tripod to avoid shake, and if your images are still not appearing sharp try a fast shutter speed.
Flowers are delicate and even when there is no wind they can still move gently which makes it difficult to focus them properly.
One of the best things about this time of year is the magnificent spring colours that fill the fields and gardens, and when capturing flowers, you want to make their bright colours really stand out. Use your cameras vivid colour setting to make the bold hues pop in your images. Try to contrast the flower colours with other aspects of the photo such as the green grass or bright blue sky.
Lillie’s Top Tips: Try to capture some more of nature when getting out with your camera in springtime. Use the action setting (the running man) or a fast shutter speed to capture bugs and birds that move quickly in the wild.