Flower photography: How to stay sharp when winter hits
A close-up image of an orchid photographed by window light with an Olympus EM10 with the MCON-P01 close-up attachment on the 45mm f1.8 Olympus lens.
Five tips to photograph indoor flowers by window light
Flower and garden photography is not quite like riding a bike. Hopping back into taking memorable images is more complicated than simply jumping back on a bike and pedalling.
The complexities of today’s modern cameras makes regular usage to maintain familiarity almost a necessity.
If you are a photographer who rarely picks up your camera for five to six months of the year waiting for spring, hopefully this post will inspire you to use your camera regularly through the down months.
Not only will you continue to develop your photographic skills, don’t be surprised if you find yourself making some truly outstanding images.
Exploring winter photography in our gardens, natural woodlands or even in sunny vacation spots is a great way to maintain that familiarity with our cameras, but these approaches often overlook closeup or macro photography. Closeup photography is difficult enough in the best of conditions, trying to photograph a subject outdoors in winter’s freezing temperatures can be more than challenging.
That’s why indoor flower photography is the perfect pastime for those who are looking to stay sharp for gardening season.
Image shows the simple mini studio setup beside a large east facing window.
A pink pillow was used to create a lovely, pastel-coloured background. In addition, a white vignette was added in Lightroom further softening the image taken with the Olympus 45mm f1.8 with the MCON P01 macro converter.
And, there’s no better opportunity to keep our photography skills sharp than to photograph your indoor plants in full bloom.
Orchids in bloom offer one possibility for experimentation, but so too does a bouquet of flowers purchased from your local flower shop. Even better is to combine your orchid images with the bouquet of flowers.
In these images, I used flowers from a bouquet of carnations to provide a soft foreground element to the images.
• If you are looking for a macro lens or any other piece of hard-to-find photographic gear, be sure to check out KEH Photographic for an outstanding selection of used equipment at great prices.
Benefits of photographing indoors
Unlike photographing flowers in the garden, there is no wind to contend with and the flower positioning can be easily manipulated to capture the best natural window light. Setting up reflectors is easy enough as well as a flash if window light is difficult to come by.
Using foreground flowers from a bouquet of carnations adds a complementary color to the image taken with my Pentax K5 and a vintage Kiron 105 manual focus macro lens wide open at f2.5. The ability to open up the lens to F2.5 creates the selective focus effect in the image.
Again the Kiron 105 macro lens allows for an extreme close-up image with a lovely soft foreground from an out-of-focus bouquet of flowers. The fuchsia flowers pick up on the colour of the inside of the orchid.
The possibilities with indoor flower photography are endless. Challenge yourself to embrace new creative approaches, whether that means experimenting with some of the “art filters” in your camera or exploring the effects of changing your f-stops or playing with high-key effects.
For more on flower and garden photography, please check out my other posts:
• Closeup and macro photography with Hutton
This image was taken with the point and shoot Lumix LX7 in macro mode. The results are excellent for a compact point and shoot camera and shows what can be done with these high-end enthusiast cameras.
Five tips to photograph flowers indoors by window light
Bring your subject (flowers) as close to a window as possible, but preferably one that is getting indirect light on it. If you’re lucky enough to have a snow covering outside, your images can benefit from a lovely soft white light reflecting off the snow and and lighting your subject. Place a white reflector opposite the window to reflect some of the outdoor light back on the dark side of the subject to crate a more even light.
Watch your backgrounds. If you have a busy background, simplify it by adding your own either be using a commercial background or, even better, common household items that complement your subject. In the image above, I used a soft pink cushion to create a simple, delicate background for the orchids. A towel, colored sheet or colored paper can all be used to add a background. Most importantly, have fun and experiment with different backgrounds.
Experiment with different f-stops to create more or less depth of field in your images. Attaining a perfectly sharp image with a smaller f-stop (f11-f16) might be the original goal of the photograph, but once you have attained that sharp image, open up your lens and experiment a little. By placing other out-of-focus flowers in front of the lens and using wide-open apertures (F2.8) you can experiment with selective-focus effects.
This is the perfect opportunity to experiment with the various “art filters” that come with today’s modern cameras. These filters may not be used often for serious photography, but shooting indoor flowers lends itself to being creative. The soft focus filter is a good place to start for flower photography, but check out other filters such as a high-key filter that you may not normally consider. In addition, most digital cameras have a double exposure setting where you can shoot an overall image of the flower juxtaposed with a closeup of the same flower. Feel free to experiment more with in-camera double exposures.
This is also an opportunity to give your lenses and cameras a real workout. You may have a lovely little point-and-shoot camera that excels in macro mode. My Lumix LX7, for example, has a reputation for shooting excellent macro images from mere centimetres from the subject. This extreme closeup capabilities can be tricky to use out in the field, but under controlled conditions, moving in this close is much simpler. Many of today’ point and shoot cameras have excellent built-in closeup capabilities worth trying.
Final thoughts on indoor flower photography
It’s important to get out with your camera and photograph the simplicity of the winter garden, including our avian visitors. Snow simplifies our gardens and offers some outstanding minimalist opportunities. Try photographing your ornamental grasses protruding through the snow cover, black eyed Susan seed heads covered in snow or garden scenes after a fresh snowfall.
But, let’s face it, photographing in the heart of winter can be difficult.
That’s when we take our hobby indoors and push our creativity to its extreme limits. Exploring the art of indoor flower photography forces us to push our creative juices to new levels, while at the same time sharpening our photograph skills so that when spring begins to bloom we are ready to capture it in all its glory.
Author Profile: Vic MacBournie is a former journalist and author/owner of the award-winning website Ferns & Feathers. He writes about his woodland wildlife garden that he has created over the past 25 years and enjoys sharing his garden photography with readers.