Simple Photography Tips - Using Light & composition to improve your plant photographs and make them more artistic

Seven simple photography tips on using light and composition to make the most of photographs - Camera and Phone Camera

• Search for some contrast

• Re-compose to avoid distractions

• Check the light, move the camera angle until the light is right

• On a camera, check the depth of field and shutter-speed

• If there's something in the way, try to bend it out if the way

• If you like the composition, take the picture

• Use shadow to create depth

Ok, so I'm going to give some simple photography tips to encourage you to get the best image you can by thinking about the light and the angles involved.

I was on another trip to Paris, and dropped into Le Petit Palias. Really loved this museum, and have images from it to use for a Simple Photography Tips blog another time.

I came across the door to the courtyard, and wandered out. The plants were lush and beautiful, and the light was very intense, so the shadows came across as really dark. (at some point I'll do a blog about the sunlight and shadows and contrast)

This led me to take some images to perhaps help you with using light better in your photographs - in this case with plant photography.

If you have a close look at the first image of this wonderful plant, you may notice that because of the curvature of the leaf, and the angle the light is landing on it, that whereas the middle and bottomn right are wonderfully coloured, what we might call fully saturated, the top left is reflecting the light more, and doesn't carry that depth of colour.

Image One - Missing the most of light and angles

What can you do to improve it? Well, maybe if you move the camera, or phone-camera, a liitle more down to the the right, you may find that the angle of light becomes more consistent, and the colour is consistent all over the picture.

Now, if you look at the next picture, you'll see even more problems, the picture is really quite 'flat' there's not enough contrast to make the image zing in the same way.

There's quite a lot of colour variation, but not the light to make them as wonderful as they could be. You can check all this at the time, just move the camera around until you get that feeling that the light is right.

It will take practise, so don't give up, you'll be so thrilled when you do get that zing.

Image Two - Plenty of colour but no zing.

Now let's move on to another aspect in this Simple Photography Tip.

The two images below are of the same plant, and are essentially the same; apart from the composition. In the first, I've elected to concentrate on the light and the patterns of the leaf veins. But there is a little extra in here, which you may find an enjoyable thing to do with your own pictures.

Image Three - Light from behind. Version One

By including the edge of the leaf at very top, way beyond the 'accepted' levels in terms of the rule of thirds, there's to me the sense of being taken for walk around the picture, inviting the viewer to peep over the edge and see what is beyond.

This is perhaps enhanced by the presence of another leaf in the background, which being in the shade adds a huge sense of depth to the picture, and a sharpness to the leaf edge.

Image Four - Light from behind. Version Two

If we bounce on down to the final picture; as I've already said, they're very similar, but different.

With this I've drawn away from a concentration on the details of the leaf, to a more inclusive image, with the upper leaf edge moving down to nearer the intersecting third, and allowing the leaf edge on the right to get involved.

What i'm not comfortable with is the fawn patch in the bottom corner, which to me looks like a tear in the picture. I should have been more careful when I took the photograph, to crop it now would affect the positon of the lower vein, and the balance of the picture.