Spring and early summer are great times to get out and
shoot wildflowers. In the first of this two-part series Robert Keeley shares
some useful tips to help you capture beautiful pictures of native wildflowers.
Wildflower enthusiasts know that spring and early summer
is the time when Australia’s range country comes alive with bursts of colour
from native flora. Our indigenous flowers can make great subjects for
photographers, but in a lot of ways these plants are more challenging to shoot
than garden variety blooms. Partly that’s because unlike our garden variety
flowers, natives usually produce much smaller flowers. Also, they are
frequently more spread out than garden flowers, and they appear in much
wilder (and scruffier!) environments. It usually takes a lot more effort to
find native wildflowers (and thus more preparation), so the task of even
finding them is more challenging.
Here I want to run through a few key tips you can use to
tackle wildflower photography this spring and summer.
01 Preparation is Key
When photographing wildflowers, you’re not stepping out
into your back yard. Check out the web, talk to rangers at national parks, and
when they are available investigate local wildflower enthusiast groups to check
both the times, and specific locations, where you can find the largest
concentrations of wildflowers. On a recent visit to Victoria’s Grampians in the
central west of the state, I spoke a local member of the Wildflower Society,
who gave me invaluable local knowledge about which tracks and roads held the
biggest concentrations of flowers. If I hadn’t investigated I could easily have
driven past some key locations. I also took note of the weather. Sunny days are
not as good as you might think because harsh shadows can disrupt your images.
Days with light cloud cover allow you to capture great detail, without the
distraction of shadows. So check the weather report for some days ahead before
you go bush!
Search for different angles when shooting wildflowers, like this composition from directly overhead. Made without a tripod, the camera was steadied by pressing down on the camera strap from the neck. Image taken at 1/50s @ f/5, ISO 100, 16mm focal length.
02 Understand Your Gear
You’ll often hear claims about which cameras and lenses
work ‘best’ for certain types of photography. There is some truth to these
claims, but it’s important to appreciate that if you understand the limitations
of whatever gear you have at hand, you can make it work for you. Don’t try to
shoot images which your equipment simply cannot handle. Wildlife images can be
‘best’ taken with macro lenses. They allow you to get in close to small flowers
and for small subjects like wildflowers, they work a treat. But they’re not the
only option. A less expensive option for macro images is close-up filters (or
diopters), which are available in sets. Screwed on to the front of your lens as
with a standard filter, they come in various strengths. They work best with
high quality lenses and with the right set-up can be fairly effective, and they
have the advantage of being lighter than a macro lens, and very portable.
However, without a macro lens or close-up filters, I shot a series of images at
my 16-35mm lens’ widest angle. Depth of field, whilst shallow, remained good
enough to get images sharp where it mattered. You can also try shooting with a
telephoto lens, though a shallow depth of field with this type of lens can be
challenging.
If you shoot without a macro lens, a wide-angle lens can allow you to include some of the surrounding environment. Made with 1/125s @ f/4, ISO 100, 16mm focal length.
03 Tripod or Not?
Traditionally, wildflower images are created by setting
your camera up on a tripod. This works extremely well, though it can be time
consuming. With a macro lens it’s almost essential, because very slight
movements can result in blurred images. Working with shallow depth of field
(even by using a small aperture setting to maximise your depth of field with a
macro lens will rarely get you better than f/5.6 or f/4) it becomes critical to
make sure the parts of the image you want sharp are exactly that. But are other
possibilities open to you? Without a macro lens I worked with my 16-35mm lens.
Operating quickly, I hung my camera around my neck, and stretched the strap
down tight to act as a steadying force. It wasn’t as effective as a tripod, and
was a bit more ‘hit and miss’, but I was able to work faster. Using this
technique with a camera which has a swivelling LCD screen also allows you to
compose your image very accurately.
Keep an eye out for the second part of this story at
www.australianphotography.com
Also, for more information on shooting wildflowers see
Australian Photography’s November 2011 issue.