Around here flowers are starting to show up. On my drive home the medians are showing lots of lupine and a few fiddlenecks. In the mountains about a week ago I saw a few shooting stars. There was just a light mist falling so it made a nice looking flower shot. So I just wanted to share a few tips on how to shoot flowers.
I think the biggest thing one can do to improve a flower shot is look around. Take a look at whats behind. Try to find a background for the flower with a nice color. When I’m taking flower shots I’ll look around and try to find a background color that will look nice with the dominate color of the flower I’m shooting. As example when I’m shooting lupine I like to find some poppies for a background and the opposite is true for poppies. Once you find a background you want you need to blur it to remove detail. The point is to have a background that is just a color with maybe some nice shapes (mainly blobs of color). To blur the background simply dial your aperture to the biggest you can get it. Depending on your lens that could be anywhere from 4.5 to 1.2. On a few lenses it will have a wider aperture but it your lens has a wider lens that even something like 2.8 you probably don’t need these tips.
So a quick side note. The wider the aperture the shorter the depth of field and the more your background will be blurred.
It can be hard in the field to find a background that is nice but its definitely worth the effort to spend a little time looking.
Oh by the way I have to credit Marc Muench on this tip as well as pretty much everything else I know about photography.