Some Flower Pictures

I see a lot of flower pictures turning up and around on the web. Some are pretty simple things, with the flower straight on. Then you do something where you put the flower to the side, and maybe you get some nice light on it, and everything's awesome. Trick is, to make the flower image stand out as a unique image, as one that will make people sit up and take notice, rather than say, "Ah, good, you've learned something in your photography class."

There are, of course, things you can do to get the flower to be interesting. One good ploy is to have a bug on it, like so:

That's pretty neat (or at least, I like to think so), but it's not about the flower, it's about the bug and the flower. It might also have depth of field issues, if you want to be a total perfectionist, but that's another subject for another time.

But, eventually, there is something in the beauty of a flower that can be pulled out. For those of you shooting with Nikons, I highly recommend the 60mm 2.8 macro lens, as it can give ridiculously sharp results, even after having been dropped on concrete (my bad).

As an example:


Unfortunately, these small images don't do the detail in the image justice. The rightmost petal, up close, looks like:


But how do you do it? Here's the simple steps:

1) Get a tripod. A nice sturdy one. There are loads of tripods out in the world, and plenty of reviews. The Manfrotto 3021 seems to be pretty popular; that's what I use, but it's by no means perfect.
2) Get a flower. Preferably one you like.
3) Arrange the flower and the light in such a way that some aspect of the flower is emphasized, some part of it you want to expose to the viewer, so that it's more than just a flower, but also has your expression on it. This step is really where the 'art' part comes in, and you can futz with this for a long time. Suffice it to say, the above shots all have several decisions that went into making them. I chose black and white for the rose, for instance, because I really like the detail in the shot, and the way the flower petals overlap with one another, coupled with the softness of the light, makes for an image I like to look at. Others might want to emphasize the color, or spray some mist on it, or something.
4) Set your camera to a timer. This step ensures that you won't affect the camera or the tripod when the shot is taken; if you have your hands on the thing, twitching might move the camera, or the force of pressing the button might change your composition.
5) If you're shooting digital, go to the lowest ISO you can. You're on a tripod; there's no reason not to take your time.
6) Check your depth of field. One of the reasons I like true macro lenses is the ability to go to f/22 or something ridiculous; except, it's not ridiculous when close up. The depth of field shrinks the closer you focus on something, and if you're only an inch or two away from your subject, an f/4 aperture is paper thin. The selection of the aperture is really part of composition from step 3, and should be given due consideration (and considerable experimentation when learning).

I prefer natural light, frankly, because I'm lazy. I also happen to think flowers look just fine in natural light, but I'm not the final word.

(all of these shots, btw, can be found on http://www.markmroden.com)