Chicago Camera Clubs: "The Art of Flower Photography from Start to Finish" by Sheri Sparks

When photographing flowers, where do you begin? You could be driving down the road and see a field of bright flowers, but taking a shot of the entire field of flowers may not be the best shot.

Most of the time you need to get closer and take a look at what interesting compositions you can find. I wanted to take a shot of sharp sunflowers in the foreground that just faded off into a sea of color. This is a grouping I found where one sunflower was a bit closer to me and the others stood farther off. I shot at f6.3, the lowest I could go with the zoom lens I had with me and focused on that one flower in the front right. It was an overcast day and so I didn't have to worry about the sun washing out the colors of the flowers or harsh shadows. However, it did leave the flowers a little dull

dull. I also had some distractions in the lower part of the photo. Enhancing your photo is the other part of photography. Taking the photo is just the beginning. You can get some nice shots, but you may want to tweak your picture with some photo editing software. When I opened the photo in Photoshop Elements, I did a little tweaking with camera raw to add a little contrast and vibrance. Then I cropped the bottom of the photo, cloned out the distracting dark plant and a little of the lower sunflower that was left and cloned in some petals on the sunflower on the left to get rid of the distracting leaves in front of it. If I had gotten out my tripod, it would have slowed me down to take a little better look at what I was photographing. Instead these were taken hand held. So, next I darkened in between and around the flower I wanted to emphasize with the burn tool. I then made a selection of the flower on the right and lightened it with the dodge tool and then sharpened just that flower.

That wasn't the only picture I took that day. I looked around and found many different angles. One thing I always say is to move in closer. And if you are working in someone else's space, you may not be able to physically move in closer, but you will have to zoom in closer with a telephoto lens.

And don't stop, but move in closer yet.

You need to keep looking around and see how many things you can see. With some practice your vision will expand and you will be looking at flowers like you never have before.

But you really wanted a picture of the whole sunflower field. OK, here is one, but I had to come back on another day in the early morning when the lighting in the sky was nicer and I had to look for an interesting composition. And you may have to do that to. Get what you can on one day and come back on another day to get something different.

Want to learn more? Sheri will be presenting "The Art of Flower Photography from Start to Finish" at CAPS on Saturday, November 23rd.

Sheri enjoys photographing the world around her, especially nature. She has been active in CACCA- the Chicago Area Camera Clubs Association and several of the local clubs including Riverwoods Nature Photographic Society, Lake County Camera Club and North Shore Camera Club and is the newly elected president of the Chicago Chapter of PSA - Photographic Society of America. Sheri has won numerous awards for her photography including the Kohout Nature Photography Award for excellence in nature photography and teaching about nature and nature photography. She has sold a number of her pictures to the local hospitals and doctors' offices near her. Sheri has given many programs to camera clubs and garden groups and is happy to be sharing this year at CAPS.