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Critiques [Translate]

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• snaphappy (5464)
• [2009-02-25 12:43]

some top tips for flower photography.
1 always choose the best flower for you subject. A tripod will be necessary if you are taking pictures in low light to prevent camera shake also to allow a smaller aperture to be used.
2 Focusing on a flower at close range needs careful. If you focus on the tip of the front petal and shoot using a wide aperture everything towards the back petal will gradually go out of focus. If you focus in the middle, the back and front will become progressively out of focus. If your camera has a depth-of-field preview you can check the focusing depth also if you use digital you can preview the photo just taken and check to see if you're happy with the sharpness. Otherwise shoot using as small an aperture as you can to prevent a blurred subject.
3 The most obvious flower pictures are of single heads but normally you'd be tempted to shoot from more of an overhead angle. Shoot from this angle gives a portrait style result and you can use a wider angle to throw the background out of focus.
4 Use the macro setting and crop really tightly on the flower head and petals for dramatic shapes and colours.
5 A more unusual approach is to shoot from below the flower head which would normally create a silhouette, but if exposed correctly will deliver results like this. This flower works well because the petals are translucent. Moving around allows you to change the background in this case from a blue sky to a dark conifer. Allow at least one stop extra exposure when shooting against a sky to avoid the flower appearing as a silhouette. The meter should get shots against a dark background correctly exposed.
5 Hold a piece of white card behind the flower on a bright day and move it around so that the flower's shadow projects onto the card. Then photograph the card ensuring the flower is out of view. This can produce some lovely abstract effects. Try different angles and positions to change the shapes created on the card. Take a meter reading and open up one stop to prevent the white card going grey.