How to Photograph Plants + Flowers

Are you proud of your green thumb? Have you been spending some of your extra quarantine time gardening? Maybe you just like going out to fields and admiring the wild flowers or strolling through your local park! Either way, you've probably been taking quite a few nature photos lately. Here are some photography tips to fully capture your garden's good side.

Tips from Jeff Sinon at Blueprint

Get down and close
Make use of backlighting
Try black and white
Photograph them while they're wet

The best part about plant photography is that you probably already own everything you need to make great plant photos. All you need is a camera with a lens that has a close minimum focusing distance and a tripod. The rest is optional. For instance, a macro lens is nice to have, but not absolutely required.

Tips from Anne McKinnell at Digital Photography School

Photograph flowers on an overcast day
Watch out for wind
Use a reflector
Avoid a cluttered background
Use a shallow depth of field
Make it sharp
Change your point of view
Focus through another flower

You can use a telephoto lens and zoom in to the flower. In this case, make sure you take note of the minimum focussing distance of the lens. This is usually marked on the outside of the lens. For example, my 70-300mm telephoto lens has a minimum focusing distance of 1.5 meters (or 5 feet). It simply will not focus on anything closer.

There are a couple of solutions for getting around the minimum focussing distance problem. One is to use extension tubes which are hollow tubes that you place between the camera and the lens. Essentially the tubes move the lens farther away from the camera’s sensor which allows the lens to focus on closer objects. The other solution is to use a close-up filter which works like a magnifying glass and attaches to the end of your lens.