Use the right accessoriesĪ tripod is one of the most essential accessories for flower photos. For soft light, you can use light modifiers such as umbrellas or softboxes – or you can bounce the light on reflectors.įor hard light, you can use a flash pointed directly without accessories. This adds depth to the image and can give very dramatic results.īoth lights can be recreated with artificial sources.

Hard light means that you’ll have a lot of contrast between the intense highlights and the deep shadows. Even if this isn’t commonly used, it doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t do it. On the other hand, you can use hard light. If the time of the year makes that difficult, you can also aim for the early hours of the morning or late in the afternoon. To achieve it, you should photograph flowers that are in the shade.Īnother way to achieve soft light is to shoot on a cloudy day when there’s an overcast sky. This type of light is the most common in flower photography. The shadows are lighter, and they blend better with the surrounding area. Soft light is even and creates low contrast, resulting in a softer image.

Each one has different characteristics and gives your image a different mood. There are two different types of light: soft and hard. hard lightĬredit: Left image – Karolina Grabowska. Of course, you’re also welcome to combine a moving subject with a moving camera to create abstract images – see our article on how to get motion blur in photography. You can also try some zoom burst photography. The second choice is to move the camera, creating trails like those you see in the example image above. A cable release can help to keep everything else sharp, avoiding camera shake. You can try this when the flower petals are moving because of the wind, or to blur the wings of a butterfly flying around a flower. In this case, what creates the blur is a moving subject. The first one is to hold the camera steady, preferably using a tripod, like one of these. Then, you can use it in two different ways. To create motion blur, you need to set up the camera with a slow shutter speed. While using a fast shutter speed ensures you have a perfectly sharp photo that renders every detail, incorporating motion has a lot of creative applications.

Zoom flower background