Apogee Photo Magazine

WILDFLOWERS

Fundamentals and lenses

By Andy Long

www.firstlighttours.com

With spring having arrived, most of the country has begun to see the first blooming of wildflowers.  Those in higher elevations will have to wait a bit longer for the snow to melt, but usually the wait is well worth it.  Flowers are one of the most photographed subjects in nature.  With so many images of flowers out there, from extreme close-ups to fields of flowers, coming up with something new and imaginative takes a little bit of work.  Not every time you go out to do some wildflower photography, though, you're going to come back with something different.

No matter what you're after on a trip into the field, there are certain things you should do every time you get ready to do some wildflower work.  Unlike wildlife photography, when doing wildflower shots you have time to go through some steps before pressing the shutter button.  Because of this, you can go through a mental checklist to see that what you’re about to take a picture of is what you want.

Before you take a picture ask yourself these questions:

•  What’s included within the frame?

•  How can the framing best be achieved in terms of camera position?

•  What provides compositional organization or unity?

•  Do I want the background to be sharp or blurred?

•  Which aperture will achieve the desired effect?

•  What is the quality and intensity of the light?

•  Is the scene of high or low contrast?

•  If the subject is in motion, should it be a blur or frozen?

Depending upon your subject, you might not have to go through each of the questions, but more than likely you should be able to ask yourself several of them to help you take a pleasing picture.

Probably the most important question in the group is the first one - What has been included within the frame?  If you're working an individual or small cluster of flowers, what else is (or isn’t) in the frame is very important.  You want your final image to be as clean as possible.

The best way to do this is to run the focus on your lens from nearest focal point to the furthest, seeing if there is some ghost hiding in there such as a blade of grass you don't see when focusing on the flower itself.  This is one thing photographers neglect to do more than anything else.  Everyone has taken what they thought was the perfect shot, only to look at the final product and ask themselves “where did that come from?  I didn't see that when I took the shot.”

Besides the mental checklist, you also have three essential factors to consider when taking a picture.  These apply to all subjects you shoot, but most definitely with wildflower photography.

•  Framing and composition

•  Foreground / background relationships

•  Understanding light

As you can see, these items relate to some in the mental checklist, showing how important they are to coming away with memorable images.

No matter what you’re photographing, there are some tips to help make shooting a little easier or give you some new ideas about taking a shot you hadn't thought about before.  The following are some wildflower tips to keep you busy this year.

•  Meter on the color extremes.  If within two stops split the difference; if three or more expose for the most important color.

•  A polarizing filter deepens and brightens the colors.

•  A reflector, white on one side and silver or gold on the other helps with lighting and shadows.

•  Try some double exposures where the first part is in focus and the second is out of focus.

•  Bracket with depth of field.  When doing macro work, you will have a much shallower depth of field than with other lenses.  F/11 is a good starting point when doing macro work of flowers.

•  It's okay to use the sky behind a single flower, but not if the flower is bright or pale in color because the subtleties of the flower are lost and the color faded out.

•  Use a group of flowers as a foreground subject with a waterfall or mountain as the background

•  Camera position

   - Examine the subject from different angles.

   - Move in and out; notice how the foreground and background relate to each other

•  Focus and find the aperture needed for desired depth of field

   - Focus on the closest element and note the distance on the lens barrel

   - Focus on the farthest element and note the distance on the lens barrel

   - Rotate the focusing ring until both distances fall within one pair of depth of field lines

•  Parallel the subject.  Choose the most important part of your image and make sure your lens plane aligns with it.

•  Even if working with autofocus equipment, set your lens to manual focus so you can have control over where your main focus is.

 

DIFFERENT LENSES FOR DIFFERENT EFFECTS

To take home good wildflower images, you can use practically any lens you have in your camera bag, be it a 24mm wide angle, a macro lens, a zoom or even a lens in the 200mm to 300mm range.

Starting with a wide angle, you can use this to capture a large field of flowers in a variety of styles, all based on camera position.  If you get low to the ground and only use the field of flowers, it will allow you to bring the foreground closer to you.  By incorporating the sky or a distant mountain peak in the background your foreground material will seem less prominent.  No matter which of these techniques you use, you will need to use hyperfocal distance to achieve maximum depth of field.

Another thing you can do with a wider angle lens is to find a cluster of flowers and fill the frame with the subject since you can get very close to your subject with a straight wide angle lens.  This portrays the feeling of almost being inside the subject.

Moving up in size to telephotos and mid-range fixed focal-length lenses, you can use these to isolate your subject easier than with other lenses.  The one problem you run into with using medium telephotos is your working distance is increased.  To obtain closer focus you can use extension tubes.

The advantage with using these lenses is that you can really work with controlling your depth of field and isolate your subject.  This lens works best if you have a hillside of flowers and just want to isolate one flower in the field and leave the others out of focus.

Another reason for using a telephoto lens for wildflowers is if a shot you want is a little too far out of range for another lens.  A good example of this is if you come across a small waterfall with some nice flowers along the edge of it.  By using a telephoto lens you can isolate the portion of the waterfall and flowers you want in your composition.

Switching to a macro lens, or by using an attachment to allow you to do close-ups, lets you capture the details of an individual or small group of flowers.  When you do this, your options expand even more.  This type of photography allows you to explore the world many people see but don't really see.  Getting close to the flowers lets you see the intricate detail within your subject.

One of the primary things you need to think about when using close-up equipment to shoot flowers is how much depth you need and where do you want the viewers eye to focus.  When using close-up equipment you will have less depth of field than with other lenses, so if the flower you're working has a fair amount of depth to it, you will need to stop down quite a bit to get the entire flower in focus.  If there is no wind, try stopping down all the way to allow for maximum depth.  The detail you’ll get will surprise you.

Tight macro work also allows you to let your creativity come to the fore.  By moving tight inside a flower you can focus on colors, shapes and designs within your subject.  When you're trying to isolate just a small portion of the flower you will need to go more than 1X to accomplish this.  You also need to keep in mind that with the more magnification you use, the less depth of field you get, no matter what f/stop you use.  To get more depth of field for your shot, you need to use a flash to bring out any detail beyond where your focus is.

Stacking different lens combinations will allow for more extreme close-up work.  Putting a teleconverter on the camera body, followed by extension tubes and then a macro lens gets you way down inside the flower you’re shooting.

You can do some experimenting with other techniques to come up with different wildflower images.  One of these deals with putting a zoom lens on your camera.  Look for a batch of flowers with a variety of colors and zooming from one focal length to the other.  This works best if the zoom you use has a wide range – i.e. 70-200mm as opposed to 20-25mm.  Stop down as far as the lens allows so you can get a long shutter speed. As you depress the shutter button,  zoom the lens.  This gives you an explosion of color.

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First Light offers workshops to prime photographic locations in the country.  Each year new locations as added as 20-year professional Andy Long travels the country finding great spots.  All trips are educational with hands-on help in the field and instructional slide programs.  Visit www.firstlighttours.com  for more information.