Rose and Flower Photography -   by Dave Candler

Subject Considerations:

Garden photos:

For a photo that will keep your attention, select a ‘subject’ that is less broad than the whole garden/backyard. (avoid the Ants from Space perspective).

Select something of interest for the foreground- preferably not in the center of the frame.

Use a speed of less than 1/125 second if handheld. But still be careful and brace the camera.  For a close up strive for enough light for 1/250th sec.

Generally speaking mid-day garden-wide photos are not as appealing as those taken in the morning or afternoon (provides for more even light and some shadows).

For the Whole Garden, consider multiple exposures, each covering part of the garden, and ‘stitching’ the photos together for a panorama. This is done in the computer after the shoot, but increasingly more computer photographic applications offer panoramas as an alternative.  Does take some time, but can solve the lack of wide-angle lens problem, especially when using a digital camera that provides for about 1.5x the magnification that a film camera does (for the same focal length).

Plant Photos:

Make a deliberate decision: do you want the whole plant or just the top/bloom area? “What am I trying to do? Why take this photo?”

What will you use the photo for? In my case, I take whole plant photos on weekends mid-May to mid-June (of several specific plants) for the purpose of comparing with progress the plant made at the same time of year in previous years. Results to date seem to help prove Global Freezing over time, and the cold-stunted growth gives concern of no blooms for our rose show, until about mid-June.

Unless taking the photo for scientific/experimental documentation, as above, consider NOT putting the plant in the center of the frame. If your main subject is off-center, however, be aware of the methods and need to “focus, then recompose” so that you are focused on the primary subject- even though it is not in the center (where Auto-focus usually looks).  Your manual will generally discuss the "focus, then recompose" method.

Bloom Only:

Center of the frame is OK, since you will usually try to fill the frame.

Be careful not to get closer than the camera/lens can focus. This is true of both film or digital; and SLR or consumer cameras. Know this distance, and also for Auto-focus camera, pay attention to the focus indicator (usually a solid green light for In focus).  Use the Macro setting, if provided, if you want to get quite close in.

Careful not to get too close for the on-board flash to properly expose the subject (know the distance from the manual).

Take the background into consideration. If overly distracting, can you take a neutral background to the rose? (e.g. a square of dark fabric). Consider the background color, if not black. Will it clash or be distracting?

Shadows: you want them, or want to reduce them. If reduce, consider a reflector or a diffusing screen between the sun and the bloom. Devices for this can be purchased, or adapted from a thin light fabric locally available (nylon stockings).

The direction of the bloom on the bush, and its background, are seldom optimum. It is OK to modify by hand. Avoid the hand-in-the-photo when possible. Using a tripod frees up hands for this…

Consider the lighting and the ‘best profile’ of the bloom when adjusting the angle.

Purpose Considerations: Why am I making this photograph?

Documentation?

Get close enough to suit the purpose (“Never leave home without a porpoise”)

Consider labeling the plant/bloom In the Photo (include the plant label) if you are documenting. If size matters a lot, consider a ruler or equivalent in the photo. If these are not in the photo itself, take good notes on the spot, and label the photos (metadata for digital photos) ASAP with the information/descriptions important for the documentation. If camera has ability to set the date in the digital metadata, be sure the camera’s internal date/time is correct.

Beauty/Art?

Name of the rose and grower, if not your rose.

Composition of the photograph becomes more important than would be the case for documentation photo.

An additional self-question: “What am I trying to say?”

Consider grooming the bloom like you would for a rose show.  Remove bum petals and leaves that distract.

Be much more careful to ensure that the lighting does not change the bloom's color.  Using the camera's selectable settings (for Daylight, cloudy, fluorescent, tungsten, flash, etc.) if a digital camera, will help a lot.  The Auto setting can usually come close.  The equivalent to this in film is to use a special filter for the lens.

For Computer Viewing or Printing on Photo Paper?

Any digital camera will take photos with adequate resolution for the web or for viewing on computer alone. Monitors can use only 72 dpi of data. But, you are unlikely to know that you ONLY want to view on a screen, so…

For a good photo-quality print the resolution of your image should be about 300 dpi. 240 dpi can do fine in a pinch. Few printers can use more resolution than that. This requires a digital camera with more mega-pixels. Roughly: 2 mega-pixels will make good quality 3x5 inch prints, 3 mega-pixels 4x6 inch, greater than 5 mega-pixels for 8x10 inch (at 300 dpi).

Keep or Share?

If you will send to someone on the Internet, or by email, consider reducing the resolution of a copy of your photo to 72 dpi with your computer software before sending (if the recipient is likely to view and discard instead of print and cherish always). This saves much time in uploading, downloading and storage space for the file.

Digital Considerations:

If you take many, many photos “because you can”, try to enforce deleting many of them in the computer as you download and review them, so that you need not store them forever. Forever is a long time, and storage space is not totally free- especially for high resolution photos.

Back up your photos. At least your Best and most important photos. And do this religiously. Backing up to CDs is the easiest for most people, but if you become deeply immersed in the photo hobby an external hard-drive makes sense.

Printing:

Use good photo paper. You will be amazed at the difference it makes. Use the paper provided by the same company that made your printer, if you can. They are designed to work together. Take their word for it. Plain old copy paper is ok for a quick look, or showing your OAO your latest prize photo, but not good for keeping.

As your usage increases, consider a good ink jet printer. Quality has improved dramatically in the past several years, and you can do well for only $150 or so. Better brands are Canon, HP and Epson. For much more money you can add features such as greater color separation and/or better blacks (both require more, different ink cartridges perhaps 8 or 9 instead of 3), direct camera to printer docking stations (why disallow your opportunity to improve the photo in the computer?), greater sized prints than 8 1/2 x11 (few will use). You might also consider a combination printer/fax/scanner if you actually use those other devices. You may give up a little quality in each device for the savings in desk real estate.

For the occasional print, consumer locations that offer that service (drugstores, Wal-Mart...) do a much more creditable job than only a few years ago- and you can often print yourself, to your specs. While you wait.

Technical Flower Photography Recommendations:

Use a tripod

Digital camera ‘magnification factor’ makes a lens about 1.6 times more towards zoom than the Actual focal length. Thus a 50 mm lens seems to have the ‘apparent’ focal length of about a 75 mm lens- and the blur associated with camera movement is exaggerated proportionally.

Digital cameras (except for SLRs) tend to have lenses that are not as ‘fast’ as film camera SLRs. This tends to require longer exposures and thus camera motion.

A small opening for the lens (e.g. f/16 instead of f/4) is often advantageous for adequate Depth of Field for rose photography. Smaller opening allows less light, and longer exposures= camera movement blur.

Close-up (macro) photography, is more readily performed with modern digital cameras. This is approached when a bloom fills the frame. For example. Close-up shots compound the problems with focus and camera motion blur.

Provide enough light

Lots of light allows small aperture for good Depth of Field (D.O.F).

Allows faster shutter speed (reduces camera motion, wind effects on the subject). Avoids time exposures.

Allows a smaller ISO setting which will reduce noise in digital camera and actual film grain effects on film.

With lots of light you can be more artistic by selectively reducing some (providing for shadows and texture).

Helps prevent overly dark areas in the photo that may hide detail.

Use the right kind (color) of light, and properly take the color temperature into account. This is key to faithfully reproducing the actual bloom’s original colors. For digital cameras this is usually a ‘setting’. Generally you are better off deliberately making the setting (e.g. “daylight”). But if you have a mixture of light sources, Auto may well be best. If you can ‘preset’ the light color by testing, this is the most accurate, but detailed discussion of this technique is beyond the scope of this treatise.

Direction and sources of light considerations

One fairly small sized light at a distance of several feet can provide shadows and detail much the way the sun does.

Fill-in lights (as second lights) will reduce the shadows, usually enhance looking inside the bloom, will reduce details caused by texture, can look great, but is criticized by some as a photo coming from a world with ‘two suns’.

Using a reflector (big white card, e.g.) gives most of the benefits of fill-in above, but does not look like two suns. This is Fill-in at its sometimes best.

Multiple lights can fully light the bloom and the foliage. Gets the center. But reduces shadow/texture detail. This is an easier way to provide enough light, however. Be sure the lights are all the same color temperature.

The ‘exposure value’ cares about the distance the lights are away from the subject. Light decreases by the inverse square of the distance from the source (for a point source like a flash or a light bulb). This is 1 divided by x². So if the light was a certain value when the source-to-subject distance is 1 foot, the amount of light is 1/(3)² = 1/9 that amount if you move the light to 3 feet away. So if you don’t have enough light, putting the source nearer the bloom makes a Big difference. Adding a second similar light will just double the amount of light available (one f-stop, usually).

For camera Automatic Exposure metering setting, be sure you understand what area of the scene is being evaluated by the camera. For most cameras, the default setting is just about the entire frame. Often you can select different ‘areas’ to be used in the computation, for example Center-weighted or Spot metering. Center weighted may be better if you need to disregard the background for a single bloom. Spot metering is usually the best, if available, for a single bloom – especially if you are planning to make the background very dark (black) to better highlight the bloom. If these considerations are not taken into account, the exposure will be incorrect. Automatic exposure metering tries to make the exposure correct (for the area you assign). Correct is defined as 18% grey (not color dependent- a luminance value). This was the average luminance for the average photo for decades. It is also roughly equivalent to the reflectance of a light skinned human hand (a traditional shortcut before internal light meters). So if you are using the default (full-frame) Auto Metering, and your subject is a medium red rose against a black background, then the camera will attempt to expose the photo to create an average of 18%. Since the subject is actually much darker than that, the camera will make a longer exposure (or open the f/stop wider) to meet it’s demands. This will cause your otherwise dark subject (especially including the black background) to be much lighter. The rose will be lighter red, the background a murky grey. If the Exposure Area is selected to include only the bloom, then the medium red will stay medium and the background is thus forced back to its equivalent brightness, which is black. With a digital camera, which allows you to see your results immediately, you can much more fully appreciate the importance of this paragraph in 30 minutes of experimentation.

Concerning proximity of lighting. Look up and appreciate the Minimum distance that you can use your camera’s on-board flash. In some cases the electronic circuitry will not react quickly enough to provide the proper flash duration (amount) if the camera is too close to the subject (usually several feet). In addition, for larger cameras, especially with zoom lenses, the flash cannot ‘see over’ the lens and illuminate the entire subject, unless there is an adequate separation. My camera will focus to less than an inch, but the flash must be at least 18 inches away to illuminate the whole subject.

Deliberate on the desired Depth of Field.  This is too broad for this article, but big picture: 

    you may want everything in the photo to be in good (acceptable) focus.  For a bloom close-up you probably want the whole bloom to be in focus.  This requires lots of light to let you select an f-stop like f/16 instead of f/2.8 (near wide open). A small f-stop may allow a renge of focus of less than an inch!

    or you may have a whole garden photo- these are easy to have complete depth of field, since the range of acceptable focus expands in proportion to the actual focus distance. After about 10 feet, most everything will be in ok focus.

    or, you might want the bush three feet away to be in focus, but the trees in the background to go out of focus so that the bush is the Center of Attention.  Smaller f-stop (f/4 rather than f/16) should help this.

    film cameras used to have a calibrated printing on the lens to help with this issue, but that is not used much these days, and neither is D.O.F. Preview, so some trial and error, and practice are in order.  And don't forget, you can review results as you go along with digital.

Digital Post-shoot work in the Digital Darkroom (Computer)

    This will be discussed more in the future, but IF you enjoy photo improvement or manipulation using the computer, then look at the software that came with you digital camera.  It is usually very helpful to improve the photos, and even help correct errors made in the shoot (red-eye reduction for portraits).  Read and practice- you can really make photos better.  Some of the features in Microsoft XP, and other M/S products that may have accompanied your computer, may also be useful. 
The top of the line is PhotoShop, but most will never use a fraction of the features therein, and may shun the cost. Additional books and training will possibly double the investment needed to go this route.   On the other hand, PhotoShop Elements is an excellent program that provides most everything most enthusiasts will need/want.  And it is easier to learn. 

Take lots of photos, with a plan in mind.  Send finished product to me to enhance the website and show us your garden!

    DavCandler@aol.com