Reflections...: Flowers

Flowers are beautiful to see and are photographers delight to shoot. They are fixed elements on plants and are thought to be easy objects to photograph. With limited field of depth and moving close to subjects there is every possibility of inaccuracy and distortions. I always look for flowers that range from small to big in size, shape and texture. Radiant colors on flowers during full bloom times are most attractive to capture. Flowers existing in back yard to open nature in outside world are plenty to give scope to photographers.

This photo highlights the presence of water drops on rose petals. It is also showing a great color contrast. The closeup of this flower displays the sharp features of each petal. This photo was taken in the early morning sunlight. Settings: F-stop: f/16, Exposure Time: 1/25 with ISO speed 400 and 50mm focal length.

These photos capture the color combination of the flowers in a closeup shot. They highlight flowers in the foreground and subdues the flowers in the background. These flowers are photographed at Columbine Memorial in Clement Park, Colorado.

In these photos frames of flowers are captured from side angle in mid-day. It was difficult to focus the details to appear sharp due to bright sunlight and being close to subjects. Took these shots using 55-200 mm Tele-lens with f-stop at 8 and exposure setting at 1/250. Final result shows flowers as if floating in the air.

Capturing White flowers in camera in broad day-light is always challenging. Bright sun light will over expose the details and will mast the beauty. Took some care to get this shot without using any accessories to curb the sun light. Sheet of paper can be used to deflect the light if desired.

Rose is always a delight to photograph. Red Rose is top in attraction and is common around globe. Tried to click this picture in the early hours when there were water drops on petals. Though it was easy to focus on flower, it took some effort to highlight few drops on flower.

Still...budding... and yet attractive. Color combination always highlights the beauty of picture. Viewers attention is immediately grabbed when there are more bright colors in picture. Similar effort is made to show and highlight green over yellow here. A ray of sunlight falling on one of the buds added some more appeal. Exposed at 1/60 seconds and f-stop being at 5.

While taking pictures of flowers sometimes it is good to expose the subjects in broad spectrum. It is not must to have Macro perspective and thus take pictures in close-up or use Tele-lens and fade out the backgrounds. Simple settings in flower mode too gives good results with flowers and surrounding details in one shot. Pink and White Roses are taken with this idea.

If there are patterns on petals, they are more attractive than plain color flowers. They distinctively give good impression and appear bright in pictures. One such example is shown here. These are small weed flowers and yet are beautiful.

Tuesday November 29, 2011

Flora - Clusters

Another field the photographers love to experiment is Flower Photography. Many try to capture the beauty of colorful petals as individual flowers with nice plain backgrounds. It is very difficult to capture small flowers in single frame, reflecting clear details of multiple cross sections of floral groups. When you are trying to focus the foreground flowers, the flora in background will lose its sharpness and vice-versa when you are trying to capture background flowers. Hence many prefer taking pictures of Individual flowers. It depends on day, time and season to select and photograph the flowers with some balanced skills and effort to get wonderful photos of Flora at outdoors. Using high shutter speeds and mostly taking pictures early in the morning will give good results in floral photography. Indoors, you can set tabletop lighting and click nice pictures with well composed camera settings.

Few pictures I took at outdoors on Flora in Clusters are shown here.

Click on each picture to see in large format

Just like pastel colors. I took this picture of Geraniums using 8MP HP Photosmart camera in a botanical garden during mid-day.

Blend of beautiful colors. Lots of Dahlia flowers in different shades. I used canon lens at 55mm focal length with shutter speed at 1/1000 and at f-stop 4.

Fire burst. Good shades of Yellow and Red in Draba flowers. Now... are these Clustered flowers or Two flowers with small clusters? Took this picture using point and shoot camera.