Do you want to make better pictures of tulips? Or capture the beauty of other flower images? Here are some great tips for making beautiful flower images that will raise the level for next your flower photo shoot from average snaps to excellent flower shots.
Every Spring, I make a point of visiting tulip festivals. Picture taking seems to naturally attach itself to visiting tulip fields for hobbyists and professional photographers alike. But it does not stop at the tulip season! From that time on and all summer long, gardens are blossoming everywhere. All these offer you literally millions of photo subjects to shoot and personify. For several months on end.
While tulip fields offer a visually colorful inspiration to make artistic flower images, taking memorable pictures of tulips (or non- tulip photos) can be a challenge.
Whether you are taking photographs with a $150 point and shoot camera or a $3,000 outfit with tripods, wide-angle and color lenses, these same photography techniques apply to realize successful results.
Tips for making Outstanding Flower Images
- HAPPY FACES SELL. Where permitted by signs, to take a good picture, send your children out into the middle of the farmers’ field.
- EARLY RISERS WIN. Light is everything when you hold a camera, as you probably already know. Go out into the fields early morning or late in the day. The light will be warmer and more complementary to your children’s faces.
- ANGLE UP. If you lay on the floor to get eye-to-eye with the tulips, you obtain a fresh perspective that will delight.
- SCALE IT. Use people to help show scale.
- BREAK THE LINE. Look for barns & other eye pleasers to break the horizontal line of your photo, and to add interest, angles, a look and meaning. Talking about lines, avoid cluttering power-lines and other clutter in your images.
- SIMPLE RULES. Make your image simple. That means, focus on a single bloom instead of an entire flower field or entire bouquet of flowers.
- USE YOUR CAMERA’S PHOTOGRAPHIC FEATURES. Use a small f-stop and slower shutter speed for a greater depth of field to have more of the image of the tulip field in focus. Or, when focusing on a single bloom within this field, use a large f-stop and a faster shutter speed to isolate your background from your subject by making it blurry.
- TAKE GEAR. Just pop that tripod in the car for low light conditions that can give you the best mood shots ever. Evening glow in your flower images makes them feel special.
- ART MATTER. Present flowers in an unusual way. It will help you create a signature and enhance meaning in your flower photography.
- 1001 PICTURES. Film is cheap, digital storage even cheaper. Go ahead and shoot all the flower images you like. You will love at least one photo, if you have many images to choose from.
(one of a ‘000 photos I took of hydrangeas that day) - MAKE LEMONADE. When the weather is a ‘lemon’: rainy, dreary…., take advantage of it!!! A family huddle under an umbrella with tulips fields in the background will trigger emotions and memories. An early morning rainfall leaves pedals laden with glorious water drops that make great close ups.
- CAPTURE EMOTIONS. Flower images are about emotions. Capture them!
Learn More about FLOWER PHOTOGRAPHY
These books here are some wonderful additional resources to learn how to make more beautiful flower images. These books will help you how to photograph flowers in a structured way. Combine that with going out in the field, test and experiment photographing flowers, and sooner or later, you will shoot like a pro.
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  Anthotypes – plant photography |
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