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13 Flower Photography Tips for More Creative Photos

Last updated: March 21, 2024 - 12 min read
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Flower photography is a fun and easy way to take fantastic pictures. Flowers are colorful and come in various shapes. Plus, you can find them almost anywhere.

Because of their colors, textures, and vibrance, flowers make incredible photography subjects. And here, we have everything from macro flower photography to lighting techniques. Continue reading for everything you need to know about flower photography.

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Unlock the secrets of macro photography from your living room:

  • Learn to take stunning photos without stepping outside.
  • Discover affordable ways to convert any lens for macro shots.
  • Explore unique techniques for lighting and composing your subjects.

 

13 Flower Photography Tips for More Creative Photos

You can try these tips over a few weeks or all at once. You can even take a field trip to practice 

1. Try Indoor Flower Photography First

To make flower photography easier, try shooting indoors first. This eliminates all the variables that come with shooting outdoors.

Your house is perfect for practicing shooting in Manual mode and experimenting with lighting. You can try different backgrounds and learn how to compose shots.

Buy some flowers at your local supermarket and put them in a vase. Depending on your lighting preference, you can place them near a window or a lamp. Then set up your camera on a tripod and start taking photos.

You can shoot in any room or studio and try lighting variations to create different effects. For instance, you can use a spotlight or a softbox to illuminate flowers with hard or soft light. Or you can experiment with a color gel flash to achieve different colors and moods.

The good thing about shooting indoors is that you control your environment. It gives you the perfect opportunity to manipulate your setup and create consistent shots.

A glass vase filled with three flowers against a black backdrop
© Kateryna Hliznitsova (Unsplash) 1/250 s, f/3.2, ISO 320
 

2. Photograph Flower Fields

Consider looking at the bigger picture. Try shooting a whole field of flowers instead of capturing a single flower. From meadows to coastal cliffs, you can find flower fields in different settings.

Use a wide-angle lens to capture as much of the landscape as possible. You can also apply a few landscape photography tips to improve your composition. You might use flowers as unique foregrounds, which can lead to even more impressive views in the background.

The color, shape, and texture of flower fields can elevate any landscape photo. Shooting flower fields as foregrounds gives your images an extra touch of nature.

So how do you photograph a flower field? If you want your foreground to be as sharp as your background, you need a deep depth of field. So choose an aperture between f/11 and f/16. An aperture in this range will give you a deep depth of field that keeps both the foreground and background in focus.

Flower field filled with red poppies, tall grass, and a few daisies
© Rhamely (Unsplash) 1/250 s, f/3.2, ISO 100
 

3. Liven Up Photos With Butterflies, Bugs, or Water Droplets

Including butterflies or insects can make your macro flower photography look more natural. It can sometimes be challenging to find insects interacting with flowers. Other times, you get lucky and find bugs flying around flower beds.

Most of the time, there’s a good chance you won’t find any bugs. But you can always use bait to attract tiny critters to your garden. One effective solution is to spray sugar water onto your plants. For a more organic approach, use smashed fruit instead.

It can be tricky to get good photos of tiny insects on the move. But you can use Burst mode and shoot a sequence to ensure you get at least one good shot.

You can photograph flowers with water droplets if you don’t want to include insects. Take a picture of flowers right after a rain shower or spritz some water on the flowers yourself. The water droplets on the flower petals add interesting details to your image.

Play around with the light a little bit. The droplets create unique reflections to give you a nice sparkling effect.

Butterly mounted on purple flowers
© Evan (Unsplash) 1/200 s, f/5.7, ISO 200

4. Bring “Helping Hands”

A Helping Hands tool can be your best friend for macro photography. This tool has two adjustable arms with clips. So you can use it for a variety of tasks.

You can use it as a stand for a small reflector to provide fill light in locations with poor lighting. You can clip your reflector to the stand to create a bounce flash.

Ensure your setup is catching the sun at the right angle. You can move the adjustable arms until the light hits the right spot.

You can also use this tool to “pose” your flowers if they’re standing at a strange angle. But it’s best to prevent the clip’s sharp teeth from damaging the plant you want to shoot.

Wrap a paper towel around the flower stem and attach the clips. Then pull it toward your preferred position. This technique is perfect for making withering plants stand more upright. It also works for isolating subjects from the background.

Shot of a flash reflector held up by Helping Hands tool among flowers and plants for improved flower photography

5. Use a Classic Background or Make Your Own

When taking flower photos, you want your subject to stand out. One of the best ways to do this is by creating a blurry background.

The easiest way to achieve this is to use a wide aperture for a shallow depth of field. But a blurry background doesn’t mean you should ignore whatever is behind your subject.

People will still notice distracting visual elements if they’re in focus or not. So make sure you don’t have anything that stands out too much and distracts the viewer.

Using a backdrop is a simple way to direct the viewer’s attention to the main subject. Try incorporating elements that give the viewer clues about where you took the shot.

Move around the flower to see how the background changes with different angles. If you’re shooting outdoors, include other plants or the sky in the background to add authenticity to the image.

When you’re outside, there’s a good chance you might find a good subject in a terrible location. Maybe it’s on the side of the road or even beside a trash bin.

If you find yourself in that situation, create a fake background. Use decorative paper or even just plain white or black cardboard.

Clip the cardboard onto the Helping Hands, and you have a beautiful background. For the image below, I used glitter paper to create eye-catching bokeh.

If you want to create a more dramatic contrast, use black backgrounds. Place a black bucket, felt, textile, or any black backdrop behind the flower.

The vivid colors will pop out from the dark background. Your picture will be very artistic!

Pink flowers in tall grass with a blurry white house in the background
© Marina Reich (Unsplash) 1/800 s, f/2.8, ISO 320

6. Light Up Your Flower Photography With Fill Flash

The best time to take photos is right after sunrise or right before sunset. This is called golden hour and provides ideal light.

But when working outdoors, you won’t always have good lighting. If the location of the flowers is a little too dim, use an external macro flash to add light.

A built-in pop-up camera flash won’t work for macro photography. It doesn’t provide a good angle of light and is often too bright, resulting in a blown-out exposure.

Using an off-camera flash from the side is usually your best option. If it can’t stand alone, put it on a mini tripod to keep it stable. You can also add a diffuser to make the light look less harsh.

Because the flash is not attached to your camera’s hot shoe, you’ll need a remote trigger to fire it. To install it, you simply attach the transmitter to your camera’s hot shoe and the receiver to your flash unit. Once installed, the flash will fire in sync with the camera.

A fill flash set up outdoor to photograph flowers

7. Try Different Perspectives for More Unique Shots

Don’t just stick to eye-level shots. Experimenting with different angles is a great way to take unique shots.

Think of a butterfly’s point of view and shoot from a higher angle. This is quite easy to execute since you’re taller than most flowers. But don’t use the same angle all the time. Looking down is a popular perspective, but it can get boring if you overuse it.

Imagine an insect’s point of view and go lower. You’ll have to stay close to the ground. But the shots you get are worth it.

You might have to lie down on the ground or in the dirt. To help you stay clean, you can also bring a blanket or an old yoga mat you can lay on.

Close-up photo of an insect crawling on a flower
© Krzysztof Niewolny (Unsplash)

8. Compose Your Shots Like Portraits

Creative flower photography can be challenging when it comes to composition. Where do you place a single flower in your frame? How about a group of flowers or a flower field?

One good technique is to compose your shots the same way you would a portrait. Like portrait photography, look for a flower’s unique features. Focus on the most beautiful parts of the flower, like the petals or the stamen. Bringing attention to these features will create more engaging photos.

You should also use composition guides like the rule of thirds. Simply turn on your camera’s grid lines, then place your subject where any of those lines intersect. This composition technique helps create balanced images.

If you’re shooting indoors, you can experiment with floral flat-lay photography.

Beautiful flower photography portrait of purple blooms

9. Try to Minimize Camera Shake

Photographing flowers using a shallow depth of field can be difficult when it’s windy. A small breeze could throw off your focus. So choose a place with calm weather.

Shooting flower photography handheld can be tricky. Any movement of the camera will cause camera shake and will result in blurry photos.

To add stability, you can use a tripod and remote shutter. A remote shutter is perfect since you don’t need to touch your camera to take a shot. It also helps to choose a high shutter speed (at least 1/125 s) to avoid motion blur.

A triptych of flower photography

10. Keep Your Subject in Focus

It can be challenging to keep flowers in focus because you have to take photos at close range for macro shots.

Fortunately, lenses allow you to change the depth of field to improve focus. Control how deep or shallow the focus is by choosing an appropriate f-number. (Lens length also affects this.)

Select smaller apertures like f/5.6 or f/8. This creates a deeper depth of field but still keeps the background blurry enough to minimize distractions.

You will have difficulty keeping your subject sharp if you select a wide aperture such as f/1.8 or f/2.8. The area in focus will be too narrow, and you won’t capture the full flower.

A photo of a yellow flower with depth of field marked

11. Use Single-Point Focus for Sharper Photos

Focusing can be challenging due to the shallow depth of field produced by a macro lens. Even slow movements can throw it off.

Try using single-point focusing when taking flower photos. This allows you to pinpoint exactly which part of the subject you want in focus. But this isn’t foolproof. There are times when your camera will struggle to focus, like when your subject moves too much.

If your camera isn’t focusing correctly, turn off your camera’s autofocus and switch to manual focus. Using manual focus gives you total creative control over your image’s focus point.

Pink flowers against a blurry green and black background
 © Takashi Tsuchida (Unsplash)
 

12. Use Focus Stacking for Sharp Images

Despite using a small aperture, your lens will still produce a relatively shallow depth of field. This is due to the close shooting distance. And it will lead to some of your image being blurry.

If you want your entire subject in focus, you can use a technique called focus stacking. You take multiple photos with different focusing distances, then “stack” them on top of each other in post-production. This creates a single image that’s entirely in focus.

A vignetted rose with water droplets on it and blurred green background
 © Joshua Atieku-Dzandu (Unsplash) 1/100 s, f/5.6, ISO 800
 

13. Use Bellows, Extention Tubes, and Reversing Rings

If you have the budget, a modern camera with a macro lens will make flower photography easier. The results will be high-quality flower photos with lots of details.

But if you’re not ready to invest, you can always use macro accessories instead of macro lenses. Bellows, extension tubes, and reversing rings are all good ways to lower the cost of entry into macro photography.

I took most of the flower photos for this article using a reversing ring. This lets you screw ordinary lenses on backward, creating extra magnification that allows you to shoot macro images.

A close-up of the intricate floral structure of a Medinilla flower
© David Clode (Unsplash) 1/250 s, f/8, ISO 640
 

Conclusion: Flower Photography Tips

As long as you know the right techniques, capturing flowers can be an easy way to get creative. Since they’re static subjects, you can always keep shooting if you’re unsatisfied with your images.

Try our flower photography tips for unique flower photos next time you go out. Have fun, and you may surprise yourself with the results.

 
Video Course
Macro Magic
Macro Magic
Unlock the secrets of macro photography from your living room:

  • Learn to take stunning photos without stepping outside.
  • Discover affordable ways to convert any lens for macro shots.
  • Explore unique techniques for lighting and composing your subjects.