TIPS FOR PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE GARDEN
Hopefully we’ve seen the back of the Covid-19 lockdowns, but regardless, we can still visit a garden… you may well have one right at your back door! Gardens are packed with potential subjects and there can be plenty to photograph at any time of the year and in all weather conditions. What’s more you can probably get started with the camera gear you already have, but there’s much more to try if you end up getting the bug.
As we’re gradually being allowed to travel further afield, don’t overlook the wealth of photographic subjects that could be right on your doorstep or close-by… gardens (and local parks) provide plenty of variety throughout the year with scope for learning new skills and techniques.
It’s understandable that visiting a new place is a great stimulus for photography, but so can taking a fresh look at what’s around you… and even, quite literally, in your own backyard. Gardens can be full of different things to photograph, from the large scale, such as trees, to the tiny details of flowers and plants. A well-established garden is also a haven for insects and birds and possibly, depending where you live, wildlife such as possums, echidnas and wallabies.
If you don’t have a garden of your own, there’s a good chance you’ll have a public park nearby or, even better, botanical gardens or a reserve. You could even ask your local nursery for permission to photograph their flowers and plants, perhaps providing them with a few prints in return. Open gardens are another possibility and are typically available to visit in spring and autumn when they are at their most colourful. Open gardens are generally privately owned and created by enthusiasts who are keen to show them off. In areas where there are a number of these gardens, they may all open as part of a local garden festival. An entry fee is usually payable, but then you’re free to wander around and take as many photos as you want. Some of these gardens will be quite formal, while others are thematic in style – such as English, Italian or Japanese – while others will be more typical Australian with an emphasis on native plants. All will provide plenty of scope for photography and the subjects can extend beyond just plants and flowers to garden ‘furniture’ such as statues, pots, pergolas or water features. Large, landscaped gardens will also allow you to use paths, hedges, terraces, walls and mass plantings (for example, emphasising one colour or shape) as more graphical elements.
Easy Start
The good news is that to get started with photographing gardens and flowers, you’ll almost certainly be able to use the camera equipment you already own. A standard zoom – i.e. in the focal range of 24-70mm or equivalent – will cover a selection of shooting possibilities from wider, more general scenes to more tightly cropped views of flower beds or other garden features.
A longer focal length lens will allow for even tighter cropping to help emphasis shapes, patterns or textures, but to do this with smaller subjects you’ll need a lens that allows for close-up focusing – which many telephotos don’t – or even a specialised macro lens. A macro lens allows you to get in very close and, in the true sense of the term, actually close enough to give a 1:1 reproduction, which is life size. This means the subject will be reproduced at the same size as it is in real life, so obviously macro lenses are designed for photographing very small objects or the finer details of bigger objects… such as the stamen inside a flower or the texture of petals or leaves.
Macro lenses aren’t necessarily expensive – especially for the mirrorless camera systems – but if you don’t already own one, there are other, more affordable options such as close-up lenses (which attach to the front of your lens in the same way as a filter) or close-up rings (which are also known as extension tubes and fit between the lens and the camera body). As the name suggests, the extension tube increases – or extends – the distance between the back of the lens and the focal plane, which has the effect of decreasing the minimum focusing distance. It simply is a metal tube and there are no optics involved (unlike with a teleconverter), so it won’t compromise the lens’s performance, but it will involve some loss of brightness that you’ll need to compensate for with an exposure adjustment (i.e. aperture, shutter speed or ISO). There’s also a fairly significant reduction in the depth of field associated with the reduction in the camera-to-subject distance. Extension tubes are generally sold in sets of three, which you can mix and match depending on the subject and how close you want to get. They’re obviously mount specific and, depending on how much you pay, will incorporate all the connections needed to maintain autofocusing and auto aperture control.
A really quick way to obtain a closer-up view is to simply crop the image after it’s been taken, but you’ll be losing some resolution as a result, although this may not be so problematic if, for example, you’re using a full-frame sensor in the 40MP to 60MP range. That said, close-ups are often about reproducing very fine details or subtle tonal variations, so you’re very likely to need all the resolution you have available.
Switch To Manual
Taking control of the key technical elements of focus and exposure can be critical when photographing in the garden, and even more so with close-ups. You may need to focus manually in order to select a focusing point that helps you make the most of the available depth of field which, of course, is also related to lens apertures.
There may be some situations where you want the most depth of field you can achieve – especially when using a macro lens – but others where more selective focusing is required to, for example, blur backgrounds that would otherwise be a distraction. We’ve already noted that the subject distance influences depth of field (it becomes shallower as you get closer), as does the aperture (it becomes deeper as you stop down), but also in the mix is the lens focal length and
The good news is that to get started with photographing gardens and flowers, you’ll be able to use the camera equipment you already own.
Taking control of the key technical elements of focus and exposure can be critical when photographing in the garden.”
the size of your camera’s sensor. Longer focal length lenses have inherently less depth of field, while the cropped-size sensors have inherently more than full frame (or, obviously, medium format). So, if you’re using a wider angle lens on a Micro Four Thirds camera, you may well have problems obtaining a shallow enough depth of field to allow for more selective focusing.
You could opt to use a smaller aperture, but this has implications in terms of the shutter speed because it will obviously need to be slower to compensate and allow for the correct exposure. Image stabilisation could help you here – especially the latest in-body systems that offer correction for camera shake of between six to eight stops – but there is ultimately a limit to how steady you can physically hold the camera. In lower-light situations you may have to look at other solutions, such as using a tripod or, if you still need to use a reasonably fast shutter speed because, for instance, it’s a bit windy and your subject is moving a little, using flash. We’ll discuss how fill-in flash can be really useful in garden photography shortly.
The third element of exposure control in a digital camera is sensitivity, and setting a higher
ISO is often a solution to shooting in low-light situations while maintaining a faster shutter speed and smaller aperture (for increased depth of field). Additionally, the high ISO performance has been steadily increasing, especially with the larger sensor sizes, but the fact remains that noise reduction algorithms produce some progressive softening of definition and details. As both of these will often be important when photographing plants and flowers – and especially with macro photography – optimising sharpness will limit how high you can go with the ISO… maybe only up to 400 or 800 depending on the camera. From this, you can see how all the technical elements need to be considered – and juggled – for you to achieve what you want creatively with, of course, the variations in the subjects themselves, and the lighting conditions also playing a role.
Consequently, you might be surprised at how useful a tripod can be when photographing in the garden. Not only does it allow you to shoot at slower shutter speeds – in order to maintain a smaller aperture and/or a lower ISO setting – without the risk of camera shake, but it keeps the camera exactly in the position you want for framing and focusing over a number of shots. This also frees you up to do other things, such as perhaps holding a piece of foliage out of the way, shading the lens to avoid flare, or using a small reflector to help fill in the deeper shadows. Particularly when shooting extreme close-ups with a macro lens, a tripod will really be essential given the need to keep the camera precisely positioned while working out the focusing, but the ‘hands free’ aspect of its usage is valuable anywhere in the garden and in any lighting situation. The main requirement is that it can be set
to allow for stable shooting at low-level positions where a great many flowers and the smaller plants or shrubs are living.
Working The Light
A lot of photography in the garden can be done with available light, but bright sunny conditions actually aren’t always ideal as it creates too much contrast, and the deeper shadows can obscure important details.
Additionally, too much contrast in a scene will exceed the dynamic range of many digital cameras, creating either blown-out highlights or overly dense shadows (or both), again compromising details. Full sun can be great for enhancing colours and the sense of depth created by modelling, but some light cloud is often ideal as the flatter lighting is better suited to many flowers, ensuring smoother tonal gradations within a colour and avoiding ugly shadows.
Too much cloud cover though can create other problems, chiefly with the colour balance, which will start to become bluer – or cooler – in character. This will affect how the colours of flowers are reproduced and will be an issue if you’re pursuing accuracy here. The automatic white balance control in your camera is designed to correct for any colour casts in available light and neutralises them based on achieving a white that’s pure white (hence the name). Alternatively, there are also a number of presets tailored to precise situations – i.e. sunny, cloudy or shade – but are fixed at a set colour temperature.
Consequently, even better if you are chasing absolute accuracy of colour reproduction is the facility for creating a custom white balance setting. This balances for the exact colour temperature of the scene you’re shooting where there might be a number of influences at play, including nearby green foliage. Alternatively, you may want to preserve a particular colour cast, such as the warmer tones of early morning or late afternoon sunlight, in which case you don’t want the automatic light balance making corrections. If you select the sunlight preset, for example, then all the colour temperature variations related to the time of day – and which are often desirable for creating a colourrelated mood or atmosphere – will be preserved (as they were when shooting with daylightbalanced colour film).
A neat little trick is that you can use some of these white balance presets as built-in warming/cooling filters – for example, understanding that the cloudy preset corrects for blueness by adding red, if you then use it when shooting in warm lighting it will actually boost the orange/ red colouring. Understanding colour temperature and white balance control is another useful technical skill to have when shooting subjects where colour accuracy is important. It’ll also be helpful when shooting in bad weather situations, which can still be a good time to get into the garden with your camera… mist, snow and light rain can all create atmospheric images and also interesting smaller details like rain drops or ice crystals.
Out Of The Shadows
There are a number of ways of dealing with excessive contrast in available lighting, and you don’t necessarily have to invest in expensive new equipment to do it. The simplest option is a reflector that you can even make yourself with a sheet of white card. However, a small photo reflector isn’t expensive and will give you the option of two sides – either white and silver or white and gold. A reflector is used to bounce some sunlight onto the subject in order to ‘fill in’ or reduce the shadows. Silver is, of course, highly reflective and will add even more bounced light, but in some instances this can be too harsh. Gold is also very reflective, but adds some warmth, which is why it’s popular for portraiture, but it can also work well in garden situations.
Another option for providing fill-in light is to use flash either on-camera or off camera with remote triggering. Flash can also end up looking too harsh and artificial, so it’s a case of experimenting to find the right balance of flash and available light. Modern DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have sophisticated TTL flash metering systems that will determine the flash output for a balanced
A lot of photography in the garden can be done with available light, but bright sunny conditions actually aren’t always ideal.”
fill-in, but it’s often a better idea to do this manually, switching to non-TTL operation and winding down the flash unit’s output to see what looks best. You’ll often find you only need the tiniest amount of fill flash to deal with the deeper shadows. Many flash units have a built-in diffuser panel that also helps soften the output, but you can easily make your own by taping a layer or two of white paper tissue over the flash head. The beauty of digital capture is that you can experiment here to your heart’s content and find the setup you need quite quickly. Flash can obviously be useful when shooting in dull situations as it’s daylight balanced, so will overcome any colour casts in the available light. More experienced shooters will often use multiple flashes in these situations – one as the main light source and the second as the fill-in light to deal with shadows. For the same reason, a ring flash – fitted to the front of the lens
– is commonly used for macro photography to deliver shadowless lighting which, again, is daylight balanced to ensure accurate colour reproduction.
Another way of dealing with bright and contrasty lighting is to diffuse it, using what’s called a scrim. This is also popular for portraiture and it’s simply a lightweight frame holding a material that diffuses direct sunlight in exactly the same way that a cloud does, except obviously you have a lot more control over where it’s positioned. Scrims come in a wide variety of sizes (some are huge), but again you can make your own using a fine-weave white fabric, such as sail cloth.
Get Creative
Beyond all the technical considerations, there are also creative aspects that will help give your garden photography more visual impact. Colours and shapes make many flowers strong subjects on their own, but it’s still worth thinking about framing and composition.
Cropping in tight can help emphasise shapes, textures and patterns, not to mention filling the frame with eye-popping colour. Tighter framing will also eliminate elements that might create distractions or visual conflicts, and so helps strengthen the visual impact of what’s contained within the frame.
When taking a wider view – a whole flower or perhaps a small number of flowers – consider where they’re positioned in the frame. In many cases, it will be
more aesthetically pleasing to have the main subject located off-centre rather than right in the middle of the frame. This is a simple, but very effective compositional arrangement that’s known as the rule of thirds (but also called the golden rule or the golden mean) and is based on dividing the frame into equal thirds both vertically and horizontally, so you end up with nine segments. These days you don’t even need to imagine such a division as most mirrorless cameras and DSLRs provide a
3x3 guide grid superimposed over the viewfinder or live view image. Remember that it’s always worth experimenting with both horizontal and vertical framings. Sometimes this will be dictated by the subject itself – a tall spindly flower, for example, obviously better fits a vertical framing – but both composition and cropping considerations might end up making a better picture with horizontal framing. In the natural world, backgrounds can often be a distraction, especially if you want a subject such as a single bloom to really stand out. Reducing the depth of field and focusing selectively will soften backgrounds, but this doesn’t always work, so you can take matters into your own hands by using a simple home-made backdrop created using either paper or card (or even fabric). Black can be very effective visually, especially when contrasting with bright colours, but if you want a more natural look, use a colour that’s more likely to be found in nature such as greens, greys or brown. Again, use a shallow depth of field to soften the backdrop.
More formal and larger-scale gardens will provide opportunities to experiment with more graphic compositions that emphasise the colours and shapes created by mass plantings of flowers or plants. Again you can experiment with both wider views and tighter framings which rely on repeating shapes or patterns, contrasts in either colour or tone, or contrasts in texture or form in order to make dramatic visual statements.
Thinking Inside The Frame
When shooting more general garden views, consider all the elements that are in the foreground, middle distance and background of the scene to determine whether they work in harmony visually with each other. Here, once again, depth of field is a useful tool… maximise it if you want everything in your picture to be sharp (i.e. from the foreground to the background), or reduce it if you want to be more selective so as to reduce any distractions.
A wide-angle lens will allow you to include plenty of foreground in your photographs, especially when using the vertical framing, and also to maximise depth of field so the scene is sharp all the way from front to back. Conversely, deliberately blurring selected parts of the picture will automatically draw attention to the parts left in sharp focus. Blurred backgrounds eliminate distracting details to help the subject to stand out, but you might also choose to crop in this situation. However, the visual separation between in-focus and out-of-focus will convey a sense of depth, so sometimes taking a wider view is the better option.
Gardens often contain other devices that can be useful in compositional terms, such as pathways, hedges, terraces or low walls which can all be used as leading lines. It’s a natural instinct for the human eye to follow lines, so you can always put them to good use in your photographs as a means of leading the viewer into the picture. Another way of doing this is to contain your subject within a naturally-occurring frame so that the viewer’s eye is compelled to move into the middle of the picture. In the garden, you could do this with trees – the trunk and/or branches – other large foliage, gateways, arches or arbours, and even windows or doorways that look out onto gardens.
After reading this article, you might now be a bit surprised that there’s so much involved with photography in the garden, but there are actually so many factors at play that there really is a whole lot more to it than simply taking snaps of a few colourful flowers. The reality is that even a small suburban garden can be packed with potential subjects, and that putting in some thought about the lighting, composition, focus and exposure will turn them into potentially great photographs. Best of all though is that gardens are great places to be, even before you unpack your camera gear.