Photo Tip 101 - Getting Plants In Focus

As a photographer I have been cringing a lot lately with the poor quality of plant photos. Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!

OK, here are some simple tricks to get the best out of your photos.

DO NOT PHOTOGRAPH YOUR PLANTS IN FRONT OF A CLUTTERED BUSY BACKGROUND !!!!!!!!

Buy some black and royal blue materials and get someone to hold them behind your plant, or alternatively make a frame to hold it for you.
This forces the camera to focus on the plant / flower and not the background, because being one solid colour, there is nothing for the focus mechanism to latch onto, so, as a result, the camera will have no option but to focus on the plant / flower.

Also, this technique improves the aesthetics of the image and makes the plant the focus of attention, not the garden, backyard, junk pile the centre of attention. Having a single colour background also leaves you to enjoy what is the subject of this forum, our flowers.

When putting the cloth behind the plant, have the plant a little way in front of the cloth so as not to make a distracting shadow behind it.

Another little trick is to stand away from the plant, and use the zoom on the camera to focus in on it, this foreshortens the depth of field making the background out of focus.

MOTION BLUR from old, shaky hands: set the camera up, put it into self timer mode, click the shutter, take a deep breath while it counts down and let the camera take the picture. This eliminates camera shake resulting in motion blur from PUSHING the button which moves the camera momentarily resulting in out of focus images.

I use this technique occasionally during handheld photography, and I also use it when I put my camera on a tripod so that I don't inadvertently move the camera by pushing the button too hard.

Get to know how to use the +/- settings on your camera so that your images aren't over or under exposed. Try setting the flash to come on outside, this technique is called fillin flash, and what it does, is to eliminate harsh shadows on the flower, but again, you need to use it in conjunction with the +/- settings so as to balance the exposures.

I have used all these techniques on my web site to document my flowers, and even have a cym with and without fillin flash to show the difference. www.antondrew.com and navigate to the Orchid Section.

Hope this helps.

Anton
PS Happy Snapping.