My favorite offshoot of landscape photography is flower photography. It is a bit easier to pursue than landscape, since you needn’t travel very far to get unique and beautiful images. All you have to do is step into your own garden or visit a public garden to find a world of beautiful flowers to photograph. But it takes skill – plus a little something extra – to be able to make really beautiful flower portraits. In this essay, I’d like to share some of my methods with those who are interested in photographing flowers.
Lenses
The lens you choose for flower photography has to capture good levels of detail, which is true for many options on the market. I have successfully shot flowers using a 50mm lens, but have also used focal lengths up to 300mm with success. Of course, the best lens is the one that you have. You can always make adaptations to get the results you want.
One lens I have tried in the past for flower photography is the Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 manual focus lens. To capture flowers with that tantalizing f/1.2 is almost impossible to resist. I first used it on my D300s and then tried it on my D800. My experience was, at f/1.2, it is an extremely difficult lens to use for flower photography. The depth of field is very shallow – almost as shallow as using a macro lens and focusing at extreme magnifications. Although I have gotten some lovely flower portraits from the 50mm f/1.2, with an ethereal misty feel to them, my conclusion was that the effort and frustration involved make it a poor choice for a general flower lens.
Depending on your goal, dedicated macro lenses certainly will work. I have used my 105mm macro to shoot flowers. You can get very close up and detailed photos of your flower’s anthers, stamens and pollen with a macro. You can capture bugs on flowers with great detail, highlighting every hair on the bug and every notch on its legs. I sometimes jokingly refer to this level of detail as a flower colonoscopy. I don’t consider my macro as my best choice of flower lens.
Now I come to the type of lens that I think works best for flowers. That is the zoom lens. I’ve worked with 16-85mm, 24-70mm, 24-120mm and 28-300mm. You can get very good results with any of these ranges of zoom. My favorite by far is my Nikkor 28-300, which happens to be my go-to lens that I use for practically everything. I like zooms because they give you a lot of freedom when making your composition. You can zoom out and capture more than the flower, or zoom in and capture only the flower, while standing in one place and seeing what looks best in the viewfinder.
Aperture
The intuitive choice for aperture is usually going to be a wide open aperture. People generally start off with the largest aperture that their lens has, and it yields great results, too. But one must be careful. Wide apertures have a rather narrow depth of field, and it is tricky to learn how much of your flower will be in focus at your largest setting. Sometimes you have a great composition, but only the front of your flower is in focus. You can compensate for this by backing up a bit and reshooting your picture. More of the flower will be within your depth of field, but often the picture will no longer be as detailed as you wanted it to be.
The next thing to try would be to close down your aperture by a stop or two. Remember my f/1.2 that I spoke of earlier? That aperture caused a lot of deletes, so I tried f/1.4 or f/1.8 and got better results. You still get plenty of detail and bokeh with these apertures, and you get much more of your flower in focus. Now, if your biggest aperture is something like f/3.5 or f/4, as it is on many zoom lenses, just use its widest aperture for the same results.
Some testing is required here. You need to find out how your lens handles, and how your images look at various settings. As with most things, one develops favorite apertures when shooting flowers. If you persevere in this genre, you will eventually develop an instinct for what will work with your chosen lens.
Shutter Speed
For great detail, you need fast shutter speeds. As most people know, this is where ISO comes in. If your lens is wide open, but you still can’t get a fast enough shutter speed, increase your ISO to give yourself some leeway.
In general for flower photography, a shutter speed of 1/250 will give you the detail you want. A fast speed is always preferable, although there is no use in going to extreme values like 1/5000. Now, that is a bit of hyperbole. I think you’d seldom see one that high, but realistically if your shutter speed is 1/1000 for flower photography you can afford to go slower. A good range is 1/200-1/800. Any shutter speed in that range will give you good detail.
Of course, there are other considerations that will affect how you want to employ your shutter speed, too: your intended brightness for the picture, the potential for blowing out highlights, an ugly background that you don’t particularly want to capture, and so on. All of these things help determine how you want to set your shutter speed. Ditto for aperture, by the way. You must juggle your settings to get the effect you want.
Handheld vs Tripod
I am a handheld person. This cuts me out of the discussion of when to use a tripod. You the reader must decide whether or not to use a tripod; I can offer no advice here. But I will say that tripods work very well for shooting flowers, especially with a macro lens or a big zoom lens that is hard to hold.
Composition
Composition is everything. Without good composition, your flower photos will be bad. Good composition is a learned skill. You want to frame your flower pleasantly. If your flower is on a bush, it is usually a good idea to avoid all the other branches that may get in your way. Sometimes, your only option is to clone them out in post processing.
If you have steady hands, you can hold extra branches aside with one hand while you take your picture with the other. But beware of your own shadow! You also want to avoid bright sunlight that peeks through spaces in your branches. These will invariably result in blown highlights, and more often than not ruin your entire photo. A small shift in perspective can often eliminate those bright areas so you don’t have to deal with them at all, which is the best solution.
Sometimes, I will abandon perfect flowers without shooting them, just because of too much sun unavoidably peeking through small spaces in the branches. Those bright areas are picture killers. But if you are photographing flowers that are not on bushes, you won’t run into these issues, since the lighting on your flower will be relatively even.
Another thing to think about is anything behind your flower. An ugly wall, fence, sidewalk or flower pot rim can ruin your beautiful flower photo. So can a busy background. Zooming in helps a lot in these situations. Sometimes, you just have to live with that ugly area of your photo.
The sky while you’re taking pictures is another thing to think about. If the sky is too bright, it can ruin a picture. The same goes for too much sun, which can lead to poor colors and flowers that look too harsh. The opposite is also true – too much shadow can make your photos look dull, without enough contrast.
So, there are about two hours a day in which you can get great flower photos. Okay, I am kidding! But you do need to watch out for the sun when composing a flower picture. High noon is not the best time of day to photograph garden flowers, and neither is a day with too much cloud coverage.
Also, when shooting flowers you want to watch out for dead leaves, drooping petals, dirt on the flower, ants in the flower, black or brown spots, and other unsightly flaws. Many of these flaws can be removed in editing using a clone stamp, but it is always best not to include them in the first place. Learning to use a clone stamp so that the flower looks perfect is another whole area of study. If you don’t do a good job of it, don’t bother at all; ugly editing is as bad as taking bad pictures in the first place.
Artistry
There is another element to flower photography: artistry. It is that “little something more” that makes the difference between a snapshot of a flower and a portrait of a flower. You should remember that flowers are living things – things that the photographer can interact with and relate to. Without this interaction, you get a snapshot. With it, you capture the essence of the flower.
A more scientific word would be intent. I think that all good photographers interact with whatever they are photographing. That is shooting with intent. I know that this is a necessary element to flower photography. The way I word it to myself is that the flower has to let you in. Some days they just don’t open themselves to you; that’s when you get a snapshot. The next day, a flower will open itself to you, and your picture will take your breath away. Feeling is a big part of flower photography.
Final Thoughts
It takes time to become really good at flower photography. It can take years to develop the eye for good composition and technique. But the journey is fun! I hope these tips are helpful to anybody who wants to be successful at capturing the beauty of flowers.
Thank you to reader Elaine Lansdown for this guest post, submitted as part of the Photography Life guest post contest! To see more of her flower photography and other work, take a look at Elaine’s website.
My favorite lens for flowers – Sigma Art 35mm, closed to 4,5. :)
Hi Vladimir, The widest I’ve shot is 50mm. It would be very interesting to try shooting wider at 35mm. I’ll give it a try one of these days!
I have shot flowers all over the world. I’m a tripod guy – almost always for flowers, as I aim to get my composition exactly correct in the camera. Also, this is the best way to control depth of field, since a little movement in position can mean the difference between a keeper and one that needs be deleted.
Last comment, while I’ve shot with a lot of different combinations, I tend to prefer shooting a full frame body with the 70-200mm with a close-up lens. This turns the zoom into a bit of a macro, so minimum focus distance is lower, but it also provides, because of this, a bit narrower depth of field, which can be massaged with aperture choice.
One key tip I forgot to mention. I have found having a diffusion screen useful at times. When the light is a little too direct, using a screen to massage that light can soften parts of the contrast in a way that can make for a better shot.
Good thoughts, Mark. I use a similar technique with a full frame and my 28-300 zoom. If flowers are tiny, I often put on the DX crop and multiply my magnification by 1.5 of whichever focal length I have chosen. It comes in very handy sometimes, requiring less cropping among other benefits. I like the macro look of this method better than using a macro lens, which I find a bit distorting. Thanks for the input.
My experience has been that shade or overcast lighting is the best possible. Subtle gradations of natural color just flow through beautifully. You can achieve higher contrasts by selecting darker backgrounds. One other tip, if only mildly windy you can focus on a flower at an end of its “swing” and then capture it at the same point later on another swing, it will moving less at the end of the range than the middle.
Hi Charkes, Your comment about swing made me chuckle, as I often see a flower to shoot that is sitting perfectly still, until I focus on it and then a gust of air comes along and makes it dance. I think of this as mother nature’s little joke.
Charles, I know I spelled your name correctly when I transmitted my reply. These pesky uploads! Have a great day. -Elaine
Aperture is definitely a thing to take care of and it really depends on which lens you’re using and if it’s a zoom, at what length you’re using it. I don’t usually photograph flowers a lot, only when I simply stumble upon them but I found out after a few shots that especially with multiple flowers, anything lower than f/8 would give me very soft parts of the flowers even though they seemed to be relatively close to each other. Testing is crucial.
A tip I might add, bring a small water bottle along. Sometimes a little water sprinkled on a flower is A) incredibly photogenic and B) makes some insects gather on the flower too, which lends well to macro photography. Obviously it depends on what you want to do but it’s worth keeping in mind.
Hi Tomas, Aperture is certainly crucial to flower photography. Some flowers lend themselves to a little softness, but too much of it and you just end up with blur. Others look better taken as sharply as possible, as long as you can make the flower stand out among whatever else is in the picture. As you say, testing is crucial.
I like your tip about bringing along a water bottle to sprinkle the flowers. I especially love when a drop of water is just about to fall off of a petal, or has just fallen off and you catch it in the air. With your idea, you can make it happen any time without waiting for rain to fall. :)
Regarding insects, I love shooting both bumblebees and butterflies on zinnia flowers. You can get some really beautiful images. On the other hand, an unnoticed fly or ant on your flower can ruin an otherwise lovely photo. Flower photography can have some very interesting challenges!
Thank you Elaine for sharing your tips and your beautiful photos. I too spend a lot of time photgraphing flowers. My preferred set-up is a Nikon D750 with either the 24-120 f/4 or 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 lenses. For close-up work I may use the 105 f/2.8 macro or add a Canon 500D Close-up lens to the two choices above. I too shoot handheld since most botanical gardens wither do not allow or have restrictions on tripods and monopods. It is fun to shoot handheld and except for stacking shots, I avoid them. Keep up your work, enjoy the time with your camera in hand and thank you for taking the time to author such a nice guest post.
Hi Joe,
Thank you so much for your kind comments. Coincidentally, this past couple of weeks I have been shooting my flowers using the 24-120 and have been getting excellent results. I like f/4 because you get some nice bokeh, and I like f/5.6 on days when I want more background definition. When I use a big zoom, in my case the 28-300, I find myself using f/5.6 the most, or f/6.3 to get a little sharper. I find with anything smaller I get too much light restriction. This can, of course, be corrected with raising ISO values (for those of you who are beginners raising ISO makes your sensor more responsive or less accurately more sensitive to light, thereby letting you use smaller f/stops to get the same exposure), but somehow I prefer the slightly larger apertures. Happy shooting to you, Joe. All the best, Elaine
Apparently, we go to different botanical gardens, etc. since I have had no problems bringing in a tripod to the those we have entered into, both in this country and in many others. Certainly it is possible to get decent images without a tripod, but I find it hard to get the exact DOF I want without reliable support. While one can jump up the ISO to get higher shutter speeds, it often isn’t worth the extra noise and lower color gamut that is the natural result of those variables.
Perhaps I should have said when I wrote about raising ISO values, that I was thinking of daylight conditions outdoors, in which one would only have to raise ISO from 100 to 400 or 500 on a bright day. In outdoor evening conditions, 800 or 1000 would work. I’ve never encountered noise at those levels. I completely agree that ISO values high enough to produce noise would not be at all desirable, and I also would avoid them just as you would. Having never contemplated diffusers until I read yours and the other gentleman’s posts, I cannot comment on them. I do wonder, however, how easy or difficult it would be to carry that much kit around in public places (such as botanic gardens), presuming that you would also have your tripod with you.
Just as a by the way, for the beginners who might read these posts, I should have said smaller apertures rather than say smaller f/stops in my previous parenthetical comment. That might make it a bit easier to understand.
The diffuser I use when I travel is small, light, and stores flat. It opens up to a larger size. The very few times I’ve used it, my wife is more than willing to hold it in place for the few seconds needed to get the shot, since I frame it up ahead of time, and baring wind, a slow shutter speed isn’t an issue.
> This can, of course, be corrected with raising ISO values
I find using on or more off-camera flashes with a diffusers negates the need to increase the ISO. Also, by changing the flash position it possible to control the shadows.
Hi Eric,
Thank you for adding to the discussion. It is always fun to read about the different techniques that people use.
Flowers, especially wildflowers, have been a constant of my photography for thirteen years. I agree that you can get excellent flower photographs with almost any lens, handheld or with a tripod. But I always get my best results with a Nikon 70-180 micro, tripod-mounted. I like to have as much of the blossom in focus as possible, with a nice creamy out-of-focus background. This generally requires focus stacking, which is often not possible with wildflowers in the outdoors. We have just do the best we can with what we have!
Hi Jim, How right you are. When we want to achieve something, we find a way with what we have on hand. I get huge satisfaction from photographing flowers. Most of my best flower photos were taken with my 28-300 zoom, which gives me a really nice macro look. I have a macro, but it is a PITA to use and I never like the results. It is often fun to experiment with other lenses and see what look you get. One thing I’ve never done is focus stack. I don’t know how I’d do with that method. Anyway, best of luck to you, Jim. Keep on shooting and enjoy your flower photography. Thanks for writing.
my favorite is the Zeiss Milvus 2/100M
I use extension tubes with @70mm ,,,,A led off camera . cable release , self timer , or not /// , I still have bellows , 2sets of xtension tubes from my Minolta days , ( my led uses rechargeable /or / wall pluggable (lec from wallmart )) .
Thanks – a very interesting article.
For me, the quality of your backgrounds was what struck me most. Taking images of captive birds (not in flight) seems to have similar issues, and I find the processing hard work. I use Lightroom (and not Photoshop) and often end up processing for the background first and then having to process for the bird on an adjustment brush as a separate exercise. It’s quite time-consuming.
I keep meaning to get stuck into photographing flowers – it is more difficult than it looks! My combo of choice would be my D610 and 70-200/f/4, which I think could have taken most of the images you’ve displayed here – it’s a good, sharp, handleable lens.
Hi Nigel,
Your camera/lens setup sounds as if it will do very well. I think that your settings are the most important consideration once you have a good rig like yours to work with. I have been asked many times how I get my backgrounds. The answer is the settings, but in reality I can’t really say – they just come. I don’t edit very much, being a minimalist in that regard, but I have become very proficient in using the clone stamp to remove flaws in the flowers and unwanted branches or bright spots in the backgrounds. I consider this a very important part of flower photography. Other than that I only do a bit of brightening or darkening, as the case requires. I’ve done some bird photography of the at-the-feeder sort, and what I try to do is shoot against a solid background, like the bole of a tree. With some busy backgrounds, all I can do is delete as there would be no way to make them look better in a natural way. The best of luck in your flower photography pursuits. Best regards, Elaine
I am a keen photographer but being 80+ I do not have the ability to travel far to find subjects. I recently purchased a Sigma 105mm 2.8 macro lens as I have a garden full of flowers and insects which cuts out the traveling. As you say in you article the rules all change in the macro field with a different approach in technice.
I would just like to say thanks for this article it answers many of the problems I am having.
Thank you Keith! I am happy that you found something of value to take from my article. Shooting flowers can be so very satisfying. The more you do it, the better at it you will become. I wish you the best of luck in your flower photography. Best regards, Elaine