One of the most used static subjects is flower, for many people, actually these beautiful things are their favorite type of photography. Flowers are of every kind of colors, naturally adorable thing for cameras and photographers, in addition to their variable shapes, sizes. They represent happiness.
Flower photography is one of the most interesting type for many, there is no doubt about it. We can also see there are so many pictures published in the magazine by many professional photographers, winning various awards for them too. As far as I know, people around the world hold about 10 thousands of various show, exhibition, competition for flower photography every year.
For the most important thing, flower is one kind that everyone can easily approach not to mention that the meaning of luck and happiness itself, the natural colors and shapes are born for pictures. One day when you first got your new camera and get outside, what do you want to shoot? Flowers! In China, people appreciate four most famous plants, three of what are flowers, they are orchid, plum flower, chrysanthemum.
The other is bamboo, people barely can see the flower but it does go with a flower. They represent different seasons along with different quality or we may also address it as personality. Chrysanthemum means fall, plum flower means winter while orchid spring.
In the southern part of the mainland people grow rose and lotus. There are also many poems about flowers among all the dynasties of China, poets love flowers just as the photographers do nowadays.
When you compare with other photography subjects, there are some unique challenges about flower photography. You got to deal with random motion, lighting challenges from multiple surface angles as well as dealing with minimum focusing distances.
The small size of many flowers is often a problem which cause photographers to struggle when they try to fulfill the frame, because each lens has a minimum distance of focusing that restricts how near we can get to the flower and keep it in the focus range at the same time. For some zoom lenses without macro capability it can be 3 feet or more from the subject.
With larger flowers this won’t be a problem, but when dealing with the smaller ones the photographer will move closer until the flower cannot be focused on and then will move back slightly.
Luckily there are ways to to fix this distance and focusing issue. You can move your body when you are on the borderline that too close to your subject, use your body to do the focus job. Set your cam to the minimum distance focus and lean backward for forward until the subject is in focus.
This way may actually be more precise than trying to focus with lens and compensating for slight body movement at the same time. The second way we may introduce is to use a tripod.
With this tool your camera will be fixed at one point and not subject to accidental bumps into the too close range. And the last goes by changing the minimum focus distance.
There are some lenses with extension tubes, you can increase the distance between the rear element of your lens and the film or digital sensor. This will allow you much shorter minimum focusing distance in front of the lens.