Well, it’s (almost) spring again, and in Texas, that means wildflowers; color in some fields as far as the eye can see. It seems like everyone with a camera wants two things. 1) a great picture of a bluebonnet, or a field of bluebonnets, and 2) a picture of their kids, sitting in a field of bluebonnets.
While just about every Texas for decades has been shooting millions of these pictures, how many do you actually see displayed anywhere? To be honest, I’ve only seen two. One, is a painting that Lee Herring did in Bremond House Gallery of two little girls who find one Indian Paint amongst thousands of bluebonnets. They’re sitting there in their beautiful little dresses with ribbons in their hair. Just a wonderful painting for ‘only’ $5,000. Lee is the 2007 Texas 2D artist of the year and he did a fantastic job.
The other one (or two) are two that I shot of my daughter Kimberly back in the late 70′s or early 80′s, and they were both framed and up on the wall for years and years. I still have the color slides of them, and one is still in the frame, but stored because it has faded a lot. I have one very small one of my other daughter Brianna, in a frame on a table at the house. So, nope, nothing on the walls with my children in bluebonnets.
So why do we take so many pictures of the flowers and our kids in them; yet can’t remember seeing any of them displayed? Could it be that they just didn’t turn out that well? That they didn’t have the ‘wow’ factor? Well, seems like this is the time to give a few tips on how to get better pictures of both.
Wildflower Photo Tips
1. Best time to shoot is the morning! Why? Well, there are several reasons, but two goods ones are that the wind will most likely not be a factor in movement, and flowers LOOK better in the morning! They have dew on them, them have not been beaten down all day by a hot sun, they’re not dried out, etc.
2. Brace your camera! Handheld closeups of flowers just don’t cut it. You have to have a tripod (good EVEN if you are shooting a field of them), or something that you lay the camera on while you compose. Then, use your shutter release timer! If you have a camera that has a built-in timer, use it! For steadying your camera, I’ve found some small bean bags that are great. You can lay them on the ground, stack them, and put your camera nestled into the top one. It provides a very steady base for shooting. Or, you can try one of the very small tripods, they work, but are pretty flimsy.
3. A close-up or macro lens. Most lens/camera combinations these days can focus pretty close, but not to the close in level that I want! I want to be so close in that you sometimes don’t even know what you are looking at.
4. But there are clouds in the sky and it’s overcast! Well, guess what folks; get that camera out and get to shooting! A bright sunny day is NOT really the best day to shoot flowers. A high overcast bright day is fantastic. Colors are richer, areas of your picture are not blown out or overexposed, etc. A lot of the best close-up flower shots are taken on days that are cloudy.
5. Darken the background so that the flower and the colors really stand out! If it is sunny, you can take a square board and block the sun behind the flower, creating a much darker background. Move it around until you have black in the back and beautiful color in front. On the reverse side, if it is sunny, you can soften the light hitting the flower by using a clear piece of cloth between your light source and the flower. Soften things up a bit and remove the harsh shadows and make the light more even.
6. Try back-lighting your flowers. The sun coming through the petals, while you are laying on the ground shooting them can be very dramatic! Remember though – don’t look through the lens directly at the sun, and remember that this is going to through your camera’s automatic exposure WAY off, so meter for the flowers unless you’re trying to silhouette them.
7. Patience – to be honest, you are going to get wet from laying on the ground, maybe cold (depending on the early morning temperature), have the old fire ants crawling on you, and spend more time getting just ONE good image of a flower than you ever expected. But in the end, it will be worth it and you’ll want to hang it on your wall!
8. Keep a small bottle of water with you so that you can ‘spray’ some dew onto flowers. Sometimes nature doesn’t help you out here, so you have to have your own supply. Make sure there are no chemicals in the water.
Kids Portraits in the Flowers
1. Reality is, most of the above rules apply to kids as well! Well, they won’t have dew on them unless you leave them out overnight. Anyway, the lighting, time of day, and other tips do apply. Even shooting in the morning instead of the evening, is a valid issue because the flowers will still look better in the morning. However, since they are not the center of attention, then the late evening will work as well.
2. One thing that is always a problem – how do you get the kids out there and not ruin the flowers? Well, I guess there is no perfect answer to that, other than to be careful. They are a state treasure and we need to treat them like that. Try not to step all over them. The ones you kill will not produce any seeds, which will produce fewer flowers the next year!
Landscape and portrait photographer, David E. Warner captures the breath-taking beauty of the Mohawk Valley and Southern Adirondacks region and its people with his mastery of color, composition & light. He shuttles between upstate New York and Texas for part of the year - working on portrait and film projects.
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All content © 2012 by David Warner Studio
Dave,
Thanks for the great tips on wildflower photography. Spring is my favorite time of the year, not only for the bluebonnets, but also for those magnificent thunderstorms that come through on a regular basis.
I have always wanted to be able to capture an image of lightning, either cloud to ground or cloud to cloud, but have never had the right equipment to do so. I have recently purchased a Sony Alpha 200 DSLR and think maybe now I am ready to give it a “shot”.
Can you give us some basic tips on how to capture lightning in both daytime and nightime settings?
Thanks!
Larry
Well, I would probably not tackle the night time lighting unless it was cloud to cloud – what we call ‘heat lighting’. I think that would make an interesting show, otherwise it would just be blackness with some lightning. Kinda boring unless it lit something up, you had a skyline in front of it (say Austin’s skylline), etc.
For both situations, a tripod is a must and if you have a cable release, you’d use that. If not, the self timer that is in most cameras will work. Figure out if you want something in the foreground or not and then compose your image where you THINK the lightning will be. Focus on infinity, set your depth of field based on foreground images or not. Lots of variables here, but if I had the skyline of Austin in the picture, then I’d figure the correct exposure for that scene with the longest shutter speed possible and set the f-stop accordingly.
In the daytime, then I’d have to figure out how much light and how to get as long an exposure as possible. Cable release would work better than the timer because you have to wait for the countdown and it could be happening right at that moment! So, if you had all your settings correct on the camera and you’re fast, you press the cable release when you see the first bolt. Good news is, lightning is not just one strike, but typically several, with branches going off in different directions, so the odds are with you.
Besides….it’s digital, and what film are you wasting? Just make sure that the composition is something interesting, and then have some fun trying to catch the bolts.