Get creative
Learn to see beyond the obvious and embrace joys such as blur and bokeh
Once you’ve chosen your kit and the right subject, you’ll need to isolate and simplify compositions, and control the light and focus. Next, you can introduce shooting techniques such as intentional camera movement or monochrome mode.
Jocelyn Horsfall, a finalist in the prestigious International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, applies many different techniques for her dynamic portfolio. “My style is painterly and impressionistic, using soft focus, textural effects and abstraction to create images that are evocative and intriguing.” Horsfall has also photographed flowers underwater, frozen them in ice, or pressed them in a microwave. “Extension tubes or reversing a lens give me different degrees of magnification to play with,” she adds. “I often shoot through textured glass to get interesting distortions and a sense of movement.” With this technique, she looks for flowers with intricate shapes and smaller florets such as freesias, rather than single bowl shape blooms such as roses.
Outside, Horsfall’s approach is more flexible. “I usually shoot wide open, as I love blur and bokeh, and sometimes deliberately defocus the whole image.” Intentional camera movement – panning or rotating the camera during an extended shutter speed – is a popular technique, too. Though it’s a bit hit and miss, it can yield gorgeous abstract results on the hits.
Plenty of other creative techniques rely on controlling the exposure, such as shooting into the sun, or deliberately capturing over or underexposed shots in order to generate a high or low-key look.
The more you can capture in-camera, the less work you have to do at the processing stage, and this is the approach that Annemarie Farley takes. She keeps a spray bottle of water in her bag to spray on the background and create circles of bokeh. “I’ve also been known to use glitter on leaves (only in my own garden) to make the bokeh even stronger!”
Vintage lenses help her to capture unique results, so have a dig around on eBay to see what you can find yourself. “The Helios 44-2 58mm I use produces an interesting soft swirl effect,” she says.