Six free simple photography tips for you - photographing spring flowers with your phone camera or camera
Try holding your phone camera upside down
Check Focus when doing macro
If using a camera, use your aperture for the best depth of field
The background can make or break a picture
Choose your plant or flower carefully
Beware of flare when shooting into the sun
So let's talk about spring flowers – Snowdrops
Snowdrops, those little white pearls on fresh grey green stalks, that bob in the slightest breeze.
So often planted in grass, for me they are somehow more beautiful when they appear out of fallen leaves, their gentle perfection offset by the variable texture of the backdrop?
My recent hip replacement has meant I was unable to get down low, into their world and their perspective. But, as I’ve mentioned in other articles, one simple photography tip to help alleviate the problem is to hold the camera phone upside down, so the lenses are near the ground.
This can be a bit ‘hit and miss’ in terms of composition and focus, but there is such a thing as delete!
If you’re using a camera, you can try holding the phone away from you, but I’ve found it’s a lot harder, and the size of the body makes it much clumsier.
Looking at the first image, I tend to dislike extraneous stuff in the background, but in this case, it was our friends house which gave it personal meaning. You do benefit from getting down low, so that the snowdrops fill the right part of the frame, and partially obscure the roadway.
The next picture shows snowdrops against a stone wall. Easy to compose badly and produce a picture that is a bit meaningless. Choose your flower and place it in the right place, perhaps get below so that you can see up inside.
What you will notice I trust, is that the main point of the subject is actually out of focus, not very much but enough. This can be really disappointing if you've been to the place and spent some time photographing, when just a little bit of movement from you or the wind maybe drops your photograph from something that's amazing to something that actually you would never be able to print or be happy with.
So what I'm actually saying is focus is absolutely critical and next to that depth of field and exposure. The closer you are into your subject the harder it becomes to ensure focus. Look for ways in which you're able to put your camera on something to steady it.
But be encouraged there is usually the chance to get it right and you will learn to do that with time, and that little bell that rings in your head to remind you.
Another point about Image Two is that the whole scene is sunny which makes it easier for the computer in your phone camera or on your camera to get the right exposure, this is a real benefit if you've not got time to spend fiddling around.
Image three. To get this image with such a dark backdrop is quite unusual when photographing snowdrops and in fact with quite a lot of spring flowers. Especially with the sun shining and lighting up the flowers rather beautifully, giving a dark non-intrusive background that helps you focus on the beauty of the flower and those out of focus ones behind.
Once again, I've used the technique of holding the camera upside down because my physical conditions stop me doing so until my hip replacement is fully healed.
It's a really useful technique for all sorts of conditions.
Perhaps you're visiting somewhere and you've got decent clothes on, which you don't want ruined.
A little while ago we visited the wonderful East Lambrook Gardens, and didn't want to be kneeling in the mud or damaging somebody's flowerbed.
A Little feature that improves this photograph is the tiny bit of sunlight hitting the other side of the flower and showing its translucence.
So I've put in I Image number four just to show the effect of flare on a photograph. Essentially what happens is that the Sun is falling directly on the glass and then bouncing around inside, causing all sorts of optical problems - just blame the physics!!
The effect is that the crispness of the picture becomes affected by the internal reflections.
Another similar problem occurs if there is much dust in the air, which again scatters the light. If you can imagine this photograph without the flare it would be very pretty, lots of in focus snowdrops and an okay background.
I've put Image Five in to illustrate how easy it is on a sunny day, when you're shooting with a sun almost behind you, to get a shadow of your arm and maybe even you and your phone or camera in the way of the picture and unless you check it then it can totally ruin the picture.
The simple photography tip is to check the image! But even better is to notice as you're composing the picture
In this case, as much as I don't like suggesting you spend precious time doing post adjustments, if this was the only one you had taken, you could crop it okay.
But you can see from Image Six I did have another option so didn't need to crop.
Image six highlights what I say elsewhere about preferring snowdrops to be set amongst the leaves rather than grass. The silver grey of the leaves and the stems tend to get lost when sitting in grass.
Here the browns of the leaves and the soil serve to make the bunch of snowdrop show out, much better.
All in all, the sunlight with the low angle shot, allowing the blue sky in trees to show the whole environment to best advantage. To be totally critical of my image the very front snowdrop is out of focus which is a shame but still quite a nice picture.
Image Eight shows a group of snowdrops with the in-focus section sitting almost centrally. I'm a great believer in the use of intersecting thirds, but feel this works well.
As I sit here on a glorious, just warm enough, Spring day, writing this, wonderfully able to work outside and top up some Vitamin D (did you know it's not actually a vitamin?), I realise that I'm using an image taken twelve years ago today!
That gives me so much pleasure. It was my birthday, and one of my very best chums and I met, for a walk at Fonthill in Wiltshire, before frying breakfast in the layby! The morning was just drop-dead gorgeous, heaven-on-earth. And the pleasure and hope that the honey bee brought, that you can see in Image Eight, was huge.
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