Botanical Photography

Flowers and plants, we take them for granted. However, those of us who live in climates where there are cold, snowy winters, we may enjoy them a bit more than those who get to enjoy them outdoors year-round.

Selling botanical images, especially flowers, is very difficult these days, with almost everyone owning a smart phone with a camera and the massive flood of floral photos online in the last several years. Getting your work seen is virtually impossible unless you are shoving it in people’s faces and even then, it had better be unique or stunningly beautiful or they are not going to be impressed.

I admit, though, that I keep trying because, after all, who doesn’t like flowers and plants in general? My advice is try to take your photo from a different angle - such as my sunflower here,  which was starting to wilt, but from a profile view was still a marvel of soft natural forms. If you are photographing outdoors in sunlight, try getting down low with the sun behind the flowers, shining through the flowers themselves so they seem to “glow” from within. Make sure the sun itself is not in the photo or your shutter will just shut down to “black” in reaction to all that light.

If you’re shooting indoors, try to use even lighting from a window, for example, or conversely, try to find a dramatic effect from a window with sunlight only on part of the flower or plant, leaving darker portions for contrast. It’s not recommended to use flash unless you can rotate it and bounce it off a surface. A flash generally gives you harsh, glaring lighting that is not very attractive.

One thing amateur photographers often don’t realize is in their attempt to get every bit of the flower or flowers in focus, they end up with a beautiful flower image that is ruined by the ugly black or brown dirt clumps clearly in focus in the background if they are shooting from above the plant, or indoors, that ugly peeling paint on your window sill (unless it looks “shabby chic” in which case it may work). Try to use a wide aperture (smaller aperture number). This will keep the main part of the flower in focus and there will be an acceptable amount of soft focus on part of the flower, and those ugly dirt clumps will blend into a nice soft blurred background.

Indoors you can shoot your florals in front of a very dark background, as is shown in my Christmas cactus image, which keeps the entire flower in focus, but you’re not distracted by an ugly or cluttered background. I shot the cactus with side lighting from a window in front of a dark corner in my living room. I used a tripod while shooting this image so it would be sharp without any “camera shake” from hand holding the camera.

Since those of you reading this probably have a smart phone with a camera with you most of the time, the time to capture that flower image is when you see it! I have sold a cell phone photo of a botanical garden and even though I could only sell it at a smaller size than if I had captured the image with pro equipment, it’s still a lovely photo and I’m glad someone enjoyed it enough to buy a framed copy for their home.

Lastly, I took the yellow daisy photo here with a small point and shoot camera at my mother-in-law’s funeral in 2013. Slightly “filtered” during editing, to me it still represents her sunny personality. I call this photo “Marguerite” because that was her name and also because “Marguerite” means “daisy” in French and she was of French heritage.

So please, go forth and multiply your botanical images! Some of them are bound to be winners!

For more of my botanical images, please visit these two galleries:
https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/flowers

https://mary-bedy.pixels.com/collections/leaves+and+plants

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