The Floriade in Canberra - billed as Australia's biggest celebration of spring - is back with a bang after three years.
My wife and I have been making our 'annual' pilgrimage to Canberra to visit Floriade, a large flower show that's mainly featuring tulips. After two years of cancellations due to covid, the show was finally on again. This year's theme was 'Sounds of Spring'. While the Canberra weather was all but spring-like, the flowers on display were the usual feast for the eyes. We always enjoy seeing the tulips because they remind us so much of the Netherlands, the country where we were born.
Of course, I was also excited to visit Floriade for the many excellent photo opportunities it provides. Although I have taken a huge number of photos at Floriade in previous years, I decided to get a little more prepared this time (see my Blurry Pictures and Checklists blog). I started reviewing the tips and recommendations from experienced flower photographers and created a short checklist to remind myself about best practices and some creative ideas.
The checklist turned out to be fairly generic. I suppose taking pictures of flowers is not necessarily the single most technically challenging type of photography. However, it always pays to be mindful of camera settings and consider your composition, angles, light, colours, dept of field, etc.
Angles
As with almost any subject, the angle at which you take a picture of a flower can make all the difference. Are you going to take a picture from right above to capture the intricate details of the inside of the flower; are you going to take a side-shot to perhaps accentuate the height of the stem; or are you taking the picture from below to contrast the flower with the blue sky in the background? All are good options, and none are 'better' than the other. It all depends on the artistic effect you're trying to create, and it pays to experiment with the angels. Reach up, look down, get on your knees, get flat down on the ground, it's all fair game!
Composition
I have to admit that I initially was tempted to do a lot of tightly cropped shots. I wanted to capture the details and colours of the flowers as best as I could. However, upon reviewing some initial shots my wife pointed out she wanted to see more of the context. The close-ups of the flowers were beautiful, but they didn't tell the entire story of the flower show. There were large beds of flowers and only doing cropped shots was ignoring the beauty of the multitude of colours, shapes, and sizes of all those other flowers. So, don't be afraid to mix it up. Get your tight crops, get your wide angels, and anything in between.
Light
Most of the time we were at the show it was overcast. While it didn't create that 'spring feeling' we were longer for coming out of winter, it was great light for this type of photography. The cloud cover acted as a large natural diffuser and allowed me to bring out the finer details in the flowers without having to worry about excessive contrast. At times, when the sun did come out a little, it was a joy to photograph the flowers from a low angle with side or backlighting. The petals gained an almost translucent quality, and the light made the flowers stand out from the background.
Colours
You can't go to a flower show and not consider colour. The tulips and other flowers come in so many colours, it's something you have to take advantage of. Sometimes a repetition of the same colour works to bring out other patterns or emphasise the quantity of the same thing (see the Composition picture). Other times a mix of vibrant colours works - not just to stimulate the senses but to draw attention to the diversity of the subjects in your image. Regardless of what you're trying to achieve, colours are often a dominant force in flower photography. To be honest, I hardly considered black-and-white shots for this flower show as I felt it wouldn't do justice to the visual impact of the flowers.
Depth of Field
I find that depth of field can be challenging to get right: if you shoot with a wide aperture to get a shallow depth of field to isolate the flower, you can easily end up with parts of the flower out of focus. On the other hand, if you're using a small aperture to get much more of the context in focus, you might end up with 'too much' in focus and your subject no longer stands out. It's sometimes a balancing act. Having said that, in my opinion depth of field is critical for flower photography. And it's good to keep in mind that a slow shutter speed resulting of a small aperture can lead to a blurry picture caused by the flowers moving in the wind.
Of course, there are many more things to consider in flower photography. I only covered the tip of the iceberg in this blog. However, let's not carried away by all these musing. What's most important is to enjoy nature and the beautiful flowers it produces!
Comments