Hibiscus Flower

Beautiful flower images can be greatly improved by the addition of a few drops of water. This is only one small and simple tip to help you get better flower images. The two images illustrated here have been captured with a Nikon D700 camera and Nikon’s 105mm f/2.8 Micro lens.

Water Droplets on Hibiscus

There are many ways to help you get that prize winning image of your beautiful flower. In the following points we suggest thirteen tips to help you get the best results.

1. A macro lens can help you get much closer than a normal lens, also most Macro (Micro in Nikon terminology) lenses are much sharper close up compared to a normal lens.
2. Close up supplementary lenses can be used in lieu of a macro lens as a cheaper solution.
3. Extension tubes can also be considered for smaller flowers to enable closer focussing using a normal lens.
4. Be aware of the background to ensure it enhances the main subject.
5. Use a suitable aperture setting, to ensure the depth of field is satisfactory to isolate the main subject matter and to ensure that any background is sufficiently blurred. This helps to concentrate the main interest of the image on the main subject matter.
6. The composition of subjects such as flowers can be made more appealing by not placing the main subject matter at the centre of the image, it is best to place the subject at around one third of the distance from either edge.
7. Lighting can play a major part in flower images and generally subdued lighting is preferred with not too much contrast.
8. Use a small reflector to help reduce any shadow on the main subject.
9. Consider the usage of a fill in flash to give more uniform lighting to the subject.
10. Use as low an  ISO setting as possible to ensure the sharpest image quality.
11. In general, any focal length lens can be used, however I prefer a focal length of 105mm. I use Nikon equipment and they also have the 40mm and 85mm DX lenses and the 60mm, 105mm and 200mm FX Micro lenses.
12. A tripod and cable release will also help to give you a much sharper images.
13. Lastly, add a few drops of water to the flowers.

Flower Bed 1, Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010

Flower photography is a great medium to express your feelings for colour. The flower beds in a blaze of colour are great to find patterns of different colours and to provide highly saturated images with great impact. A zoom lens in the range 24-120mm is great to capture the flower beds and their colours. The above image has been taken with a Nikon D700 and 24-120mm zoom lens. The zoom is handy to help frame the image and select the components you want to include in the composition.

Flower Bed, Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010

The flower bed image above was again taken with a Nikon D700 camera, but this time with a 105mm Macro lens. The macro lens gives more flexibility and enables you to get closer to the flowers as required. Generally close up Macro or Micro lenses are extremely sharp and enable the camera to record greater detail.

The image below of the single tulip was again captured with the 105mm Micro lens, this lens enables the photographer to focus down to life size if requirecd.

Tulip, Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010

All the above images were processed in Photoshop and were given a slight boost in saturation, to enhance the colours and also a small amount of sharpening. When taking close up images of the flowers be aware of the background to ensure the background is uncluttered and not interfering with the main subject matter.

Snap Dragons, Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010

A flower festival is a great opportunity to capture a range of flowers. The above snap dragon, garden bed image was captured with a Nikon 24-120mm zoom lens. At garden shows the beds are generally a blaze of color and a medium range zoom lens is great to capture the garden beds.

Poppy, Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010

The above poppy has been captured with a Nikon, 105mm, f/4, VR, Micro lens. A lens such as this enables you to get close to the subject and still keep a reasonable distance and yet, still fill up the viewfinder frame.

Iris, Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010

The iris above has also been captured with the Nikon, 105mm, Micro lens.

Toowoomba Flower Festival, 2010