Getting the Most out of Spring Flowers

"Spring is sprung, the grass is ris, I wonder where the birdies is!" 

In other words, spring is here and the floral season is upon us. This blog post is about getting the most out of spring flowers looking at equipment, subject and composition. Close-up or macro photography is a fascinating sub-genre of nature photography that can give a lot of bang for the buck - you don't have to invest tons of money in expensive equipment to get some cracking results.

Pear Blossom in my Garden || Olympus 60 mm, f/8, 1/400 s, ISO 200

I'm not going to go into complicated things like focus stacking or special lighting here, this post is going to be directed at beginners and enthusiasts - how to get stunning close-ups of flowers in the spring. For those interested in the technical background, the official definition of a macro photograph is one where the subject takes up the same amount of space on the camera sensor as in real life; this is a 1:1 representation of the subject. Anything lower than this is simply a close-up, from around the 5:1 level we're into microscopic photography.

The Equipment

Every lens has a minimal focus distance - the closest distance at which you can focus on an object. On a normal lens this will be somewhere between 20-50 cm, which is too far to get great shots of small subjects. But there are a couple of relatively inexpensive ways of reducing this, allowing you to get closer to your subject and allowing you to fill your frame with the beauty that nature provides. No-one is going to be interested in a shot of flower blossoms that fill 2% of your photo. The aim here is to get up close and personal with nature.

Close-up Filter (l) and Extension Tubes

The first tool I bought for close-up photography was a +3 diopter close-up filter for my standard M. Zuiko 12-100 mm lens that I use on my Olympus camera. This effectively functions as a magnifying glass screwed onto the front of your lens and allowing you to reduce the minimal focal distance. Plus 3 diopter allows you to get significantly closer, but be prepared to dig a little into your pocket for this. I just looked up how much this filter costs on the Big River website and was shocked to see that you'll need to spend around € 100 for one of these attachments at the moment. I'm sure I didn't spend that much when I bought mine, but for a number of years, this was my go-to tool, always in my camera bag in the mountains.

Fill that Frame! Pansy close-up

The next tool I bought was a set of extension tubes. These are essentially hollow tubes that are inserted between the lens and the camera. They don't contain any glass and so won't affect the quality of your photo in any way. Often they will provide connectors that allow your camera to continue to communicate with the lens for purposes of setting the aperture and focus. The tubes also allow you to get much closer to your subject as above. A set of tubes will set you back about € 30 (+/-). The length of the tubes shouldn't be longer than the focal length of your lens, otherwise you won't be able to focus.

If you're really serious about close-up photography you might want to consider investing in a dedicated macro lens. I recently bought the Olympus f/2.8 60 mm macro lens. It's so small that I can take it with me everywhere. 

Normally, a tripod isn't necessary and a lot of macro photographers actually prefer not to use them. For standard shots I don't bother with one, only if I'm focus stacking or dealing with really small subjects.

Ladybird on Nettle Flower || Olympus 60 mm, f/8, 1/50 s, ISO 400 

All of the above can also be combined and I've already used the extension tubes to great effect with my macro lens allowing me to get some really close up shots of garden insects such as the ladybird above.

The Subject

Not every flower works well close-up. Some look better as a group from a distance, get too close and they can be boring. Complex flowers like dandelions and daisies can look fantastic close up. Others can look just bleurgh... Trial and error is the best approach here. Blossom is nearly always good close up, as are catkins and pussy willow. Experiment and you'll find what works best for you.

Dandelion Detail || Olympus 60 mm, f/8, 1/100 s, ISO 400

One of the beauties of macro photography is that you don't need to go far to find your subject. If you have a garden or even just a balcony, you more than have plenty of subjects to hand. Otherwise, head out to a local park, or even better a botanical garden.

One of the things to bear in mind with close-up photography is that the depth of field gets shallower the closer you are to a subject. This can be both a boon and a bane. It can really isolate the subject matter using sharp focus on your subject whilst throwing the background (and foreground) pleasingly out of focus, but if the depth of focus is too tight you'll struggle to get all of you subject in focus.

Down among the Daisies || Olympus 60 mm, f/5.6, 1/1250 s, ISO 200 

The depth of field (or depth of focus) describes the distance before and after the focal point that is acceptably in focus to the native eye. At it's shallowest, the subject is is in focus and the foreground and background are blurred. At it's broadest, focus will extend for most of the scene. In the shot of the daisies above, the depth of focus is restricted to the plane encompassing the yellow stamen of the central daisy flower. Everything in front of that and everything behind is out of focus.

Just like the exposure triangle (ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture), there's a depth of field triangle:

Aperture - Focal Distance - Focal Length

The wider the aperture, the shorter the distance from the lens and the longer the lens, the shallower the depth of field:

	Shallower DoF	Wider DoF
Aperture	Wider (lower number)	Narrower (higher number)
Focal Distance	Closer	Further away
Focal Length	Longer	Shorter

The Composition

One of the great things about macro photography is it gives you to present your viewers with details that they perhaps hadn't consciously seen before giving rise to that cherished 'oh wow!' reaction. There are a couple of simple tricks to getting a cool close-up photo of flowers:

One of my favourites is to get low down to the flower, on your stomach in the grass if needs be (taking care not to squash other flowers and don't forget to check for ticks afterwards). This gives a much more interesting angle and view than looking straight down on the flowers, catching your shoes in frame. For greatest effect you need to be just above or below 90° - above allows a glimpse into the flower, below can be really effective against the light.

Down at Daisy Level || Olympus 60 mm, f/8, 1/200 s, ISO 200

Another thing that's cool to do is to put the flowers in their context. The shot here of the crocuses isn't a close-up, but it puts them nicely in their context in the Allgäu mountains. The best way of doing this is with a wide angle lens, making sure to get close to your subject matter so it takes up a significant part of the frame whilst allowing the background to play a supporting role.

Mountain Crocuses in Context || Olympus 18 mm, f/8, 1/320 s, ISO 200

With these primulas I included a bit of the stream to anchor them in their environment. Opening the aperture helped me to isolate the flowers and give the viewer a hint where they're supposed to look, important here given the lack of colour contrast between the flowers and the background.

Primulas at the Stream || Olympus 100 mm, f/4, 1/50 s, ISO 200

Where the flowers aren't necessarily very strong individually, back up a little and take them as a group - there's strength in numbers.

Crocus Field || Olympus 80 mm, f/8, 1/320 s, ISO 400

When shooting tree blossom, diagonal branches can support the composition. Watch out for distracting elements in the background and try to get your focus on the closest part of the blossom for the biggest impact.

Spring Blossom || Olympus 60 mm, f/8, 1/400 s, ISO 200

So, what's stopping you? Get out there, take some stunning spring photos and share them online!

Addendum: Light

I've just been out working in the garden and realised that I'd forgotten one of the most important aspects of photography: Light. Most of the time our instinct is (hopefully) to shoot with the light behind us or to the side. If we shoot into the light, often our subject will be a dark splodge and the background a washed-out blur. It hurts when I see people taking photos like this because I know they're going to turn out badly. Always know where the light's coming from and take it into account when you're taking photos.

The wonderful thing about flowers though is that they're often translucent - they let a certain amount of light through - as illustrated by this lovely photo by my friend Emma Marra. It also shows nicely the principle of shooting from slightly below the flowers and up towards the light. All the better if you can place something dark behind the flowers as here to let them really shine.

Emma's Tulips. Down low and against the light.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today...

...you're sure of a big surprise! Mushroom season is upon us and some great photo opportunities if you know how to make the best of them. When Matthias came down to visit and shoot last weekend (mate, you've got to get a webpage up so that I can link to your great images), one of the things I was excited about was getting round to a good mushroom shoot. There's a really easy trick-shot with mushrooms if you know what you're doing. Matthias was complaining about the lack of suitable woodland where he lives in the north east of Bavaria near the Czech border and I blindly boasted that we had a great little woodland at the bottom of the village that was sure to have a great supply. Fortunately my woods didn't let me down, quite the reverse, they did me proud.

Lantern Mushrooms || Olympus 47 mm, f/11, 1 s, ISO 200 

I'll share at the bottom the technical details of how to pull off a shot like this - it sounds more complicated than it is, honest!

In the meantime I'll just dump a number of the other photos from our session here without much explanation in between. My go-to aperture with my Olympus Zuiko 12-100 zoom is f/8 - it's a great compromise between image quality and depth of field. Because a lot of these images were taken at relatively short distances, where depth of field shrinks to virtually nothing, I stopped down to f/11 in the hope of increasing the amount of each photo that was in focus.

It's Not Just Mushrooms || Olympus 92 mm, f/8, 1/2 s, ISO 400

All the Delicate Stuff || Olympus 12 mm, f/5, 1/4 s, ISO 200

Huddled Close || Olympus 47 mm, f/11, 1 s, ISO 200

The Little Things I || Olympus 47 mm, f/11, 1 s, ISO 200 

The Little Things II || Olympus 47 mm, f/11, 1/2 s, ISO 200

The mushrooms in the above two images were so small that I wouldn't have spotted then if hadn't been for Matthias' eagle eyes. The tops couldn't have been more than 5 mm across. To be able to get close enough I had to screw the +3 diopter magnifying filter on to the front of the lens and lie down on the moss.

Narrow Focal Plane is a Challenge || Olympus 41 mm, f/11, 1/5 s, ISO 200

Another Composite Shot || Olympus 28 mm, f/11, 0.6 s, ISO 200

And Without Illumination || Olympus 28 mm, f/11, 1/4 s, ISO 200

Olympus 66 mm, f/11, 30 s, ISO 200

Twin Caps || Olympus 31 mm, f/11, 10 s, ISO 200

Twin Caps II || Olympus 31 mm, f/11, 2.5 s, ISO 200

I was really proud of this image, showed it to my wife Sharon and she just burst out laughing. Piqued, I asked her what was so funny, and then she pointed out the googly eyes above the left mushroom. Fair point.

Where the Fairies Live I || Olympus 44 mm, f/11, 4 s, ISO 200

Where the Fairies Live II || Olympus 92 mm, f/11, 3.2 s, ISO 200

All in a Row || Olympus 92 mm, f/11, 3.2 s, ISO 200

Cluster || Olympus 100 mm, f/11, 3.2 s, ISO 200

B-Shot || Olympus 100 mm, f/11, 2 s, ISO 200

Just to show that it doesn't all go right. Sometimes the depth of field is too shallow for a decent shot...

How It's Done

These illuminated mushroom shots are super impressive and quite easy to do with minimal equipment. All you need is:

• a suitably patient patch of mushrooms
• a camera - preferably one with a manual mode
• a tripod or other means of keeping the camera absolutely still for two shots (though as Matthias shows below, putting the camera on the ground is enough too, you just need to be absolutely sure it doesn' move between the two shots)
• a light source (torch, smartphone or in our case Lume Cubes)
• software that can deal with layering two photos over each other

Setting up the shot

The procedure in the field (forest?) is relatively simple: set up the scene, making sure you get low enough - you're going to get dirty knees whatever, so you may as well get used to that - the angle has to be below the gills so you may have to find some mushrooms on a log. Watch out for the background - it's easy to focus so intensely on the thing in front of you that you blend out horrible stuff in the back.

Set the camera in manual mode, you'll want a relatively low aperture - say around f/11 - unless you focus-stack depth of field is going to be a challenge because we're dealing with close-up photography and then set up the shutter speed - it doesn't have to be fast because the camera is fixed. Your camera should show you what is a good shutter speed, though at this stage it doesn't hurt if you deliberately underexpose by  anything up to a stop - generally shown as EV setting at the bottom of the display. If you have the option and feel confidant about doing it, I would strongly recommend that you focus manually too; the scene in front of the camera is likely to be very 'busy' and the camera can't read your mind - it doesn't know exactly which aspect of the scene you want to have in clear focus.

Take the starting shot, preferably either with a remote or a 2 s timer so you don't introduce unnecessary camera shake. 

Then take your light source, hold it over the mushrooms and take your second shot. The brightness and distance are both matters for experimentation. Thicker mushrooms will require you holding the light closer so that you can see the light shining through the mushroom gills. Check your second exposure that it's not over-exposed and if it is, repeat with the light dimmer or higher up. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

Now you should have two shots which are properly exposed, properly focused and identical except for the light. Now comes the software bit. 

Base exposure, illuminated exposure and final blended image

Exactly how you blend the images will depend on your software. I use a processing program called ON1 Photo Raw that lets me layer the photos and then determine which parts of which photo appear in the final image. This can be a bit fiddly but is worth spending time on to get it right. Defining which parts of which photo shows uses a mask - a black/white/grey layer that dictates which part of an image show and which are concealed. In this case I had the lighter image as the top layer and used the mask you can see below:

The mask, I've elected to completely mask out the tops of the caps and then have a gradient of light bleeding off into the darker image

The resulting compound image

The rest is increasing the colours and getting the shading right.

The Wooden Bridge: Editing from Start to Finish in ON1 Photo Raw 2020

Once a year, I get together with a German friend that I met on an Olympus camera group on Facebook and we shoot together for a day or two. I say once a year, we managed it for the second year in a row last weekend, but it works so well that we're both adamant that we want to keep going. Both occasions have been incredibly productive photographically, partly as it's normally the only time in the year that I get up to catch sunrise on the Alps from home.

The Covered Bridge || Olympus 8 mm HDR f/8, 1 s, ISO 200 

Last year, we headed down to Füssen and the Stuiben Falls for some epic waterfall shots. This year I wanted to check out a composition that I'd driven past many times but never stopped for and then head to the Zipfelsbach waterfalls at Bad Hindelang. Covid prevented us from entering Austrian Tirol and so we had to stay on this side of the border. There was a chance of a decent sunrise, so I dragged myself out of a warm bed at 5.30 am, grabbed a quick breakfast and coffee before hitting the road. Matthias had driven down the day before and we'd had a productive afternoon in a nearby woods shooting mushrooms and fungi.

Dawn wasn't a huge success, but we did confirm that the composition was solid: a gently snaking farm track leading up to a village church with the Allgäu mountains in the background. Definitely something to be repeated in better conditions.

Dawn at Seeg || Olympus 8 mm HDR f/8, 1/3 s, ISO 200

The weather wasn't great - I tend to be a sunshine photographer, but Matthias seemed happy enough with the cloud cover. Grey days are great for waterfalls and so we headed down to Hinterstein to check out a location that I'd been to with the family earlier in the year and wanted to spend a little longer at. When we were there in May it was a hike rather than a photo jaunt and I wanted to spend a little longer trying to get some better compositions. Diffuse light is much better than direct sunlight for waterfalls due to the huge dynamic ranges involved - the highlights are really bright and the shadows are really dark, a challenge for any camera.

Driving up into the mountains from Seeg, the atmosphere became really moody and we had to actually stop once or twice to get the cameras out and take in the scenes around us, whether the misty fir trees or a hilltop signifying the change of season. It was nice to not have to be going anywhere or getting anywhere, just driving and being able to stop for 10 minutes here and there to take it all in and try to capture the atmosphere around us. I've long been trying to build in the communication of mood into my photos. The conditions made it easy.

Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold || Olympus 100 mm f/5.6, 1/13 s, ISO 200 

Autumn into Winter || Olympus 86 mm f/7.1, 1/5 s, ISO 200

We managed to get a few decent compositions of the waterfalls in the gentle drizzle before heading back down to Hinterstein with a view to finding lunch in the valley. On the road in, we'd noticed a covered wooden bridge on the side of the road and on a whim we decided to stop and check it out. After struggling to find a parking spot in the tiny village we took the cameras and tripods back to the bridge to see what we could find. Very quickly we realised that we'd struck gold. The bridge sits beautifully in the valley with wooded hills behind. The deciduous trees adjacent to the bridge were in good autumn colour and the river colour was a delightful turquoise.

Zipfelbach Waterfall || Olympus 21 mm f/9, 1/2 s, ISO 200

Not only that the bridge sat at the end of a horseshoe bend in the river. It was a bit overcast, but we reckoned we could make something of it nevertheless. We probably spent the best part of 30 minutes working the scene in order to get the best composition before we decided that there wasn't much more that we could do before heading back to the car and searching for an elusive lunch. One of us would spot one compositional element then the other another, walking up- and downstream looking for the best vantage point. From a certain angle you could just make out last night's snow on the hills behind, from another you could block out the road on the other side of the river, from another you could catch the whole river bend and bridge in one shot; it was a real game of cat and mouse to get the right composition. Personally I wasn't overly happy with the light, but I was very smug that once again my nose for a potential composition had proved right.

The Photo(s)

I tried a couple of standpoints along the river, shooting both portrait and landscape, trying to get the snow in and working with and without the grassy bank. Even in the dull-ish light we were having to take multiple shots to get the exposure right, underexposing to get the highlights and re-taking the shot over-exposed to get the shadow detail, a process called exposure bracketing that most modern cameras offer. 

I also used the on-board ND filter function of the camera to slow down the river. Rather than freezing the motion with a single short exposure, it adds a sense of calm to a water photo if you can take a longer exposure, evening out the flow.

Assembling the Panorama Images of the Bridge

On the single shots I also used a circular polariser to cut down the glare on the water, revealing the beautiful colours and stones beneath the surface. Using a polariser can make stitching panorama shots together tricky though, so for the panorama I took it off. Taking a panorama of a scene like this is relatively easy if you follow a few basic rules: 

• always shoot in manual so that the exposure is exactly the same for all the shots, exposing for the brightest part of the scene
• if necessary bracket the exposures (see above)
• focusing manually can help too, making sure that you avoid inadvertently focusing on a blade of grass in front of the camera for the critical middle shot
• make sure the camera is horizontal before you start
• overlap each photo by about a third to make the stitching easier

I did a double exposure for each shot, which actually caused me difficulties in the end - I should have done three, but more of that in the processing.

The Edit

I first bought ON1 Photo Raw soon after buying my Olympus E-M1 Mk II in March 2019. Up until then I was using Photoshop Elements as my main processing software, which only allowed me to perform universal edits. I looked long and hard at the market leading Adobe Lightroom, darling of professional landscape photographers all over, but was put off by the subscription-based approach to purchasing the software; you could only rent the software rather than buying it outright, a concept I couldn't warm to. Looking around for suitable alternatives I finally landed on ON1 (pronounced "on one"), a software that started out as a plug-in for Photoshop but which had relatively recently become a standalone product.

In the meantime I consider myself a relatively advanced user; I develop all of my photos with ON1 - with the exception of astro- and lunar photos as the sole image processor - and I think that I have a relatively good grasp of its capabilities.

Nevertheless, this next shot almost cost me my composure. I couldn't for the life of me get it to look how I wanted it, and in no way did it match Matthias' HDR image of the scene. 

To start with, I had a 9-shot panorama taken at 18 mm (36 mm full-frame equivalent) in portrait. Each shot was double - one light one dark for the sky.

The first step was to stitch each of the two panoramas separately in ON1 and then combine them to get exposure blending. I'd previously done a quick HDR exposure blend of another shot to get a feel for how it might turn out:

Colours are working, but missing the river bend...

The colours of the shot above are relatively pleasing (to my eye at least), as is the tonal range, so imagine my surprise when I stitched my panorama together and got this:

A Pale Comparison

No manner of shifting the white balance and trying to modify the colours would let me get anywhere near this. ON1 wouldn't let me combine the two panoramas for an HDR image. At first I thought it was  because there were only two images and an HDR customarily uses three, but it wouldn't accept the format of the stitched panoramas. So I created a third panorama of the darker series, artificially underexposed it and tried again, with the same result.

In the end, I had to create an HDR from each of the seven panels I ended up using for the final panorama, saving these as information-rich TIFs and then stitching those together to get the final image. Fortunately, this worked, but by this time I'd burnt through the best part of the evening trying to bend the original panoramas to my will.

And the Three Shall Be One!

This is the raw product of the panorama of the HDR images:

Our Starting Point

Now the editing can start. I don't generally do much in the way of global edits in the Develop tab of ON1 unless it's to rescue some highlights at a later stage. Most of my editing I do using a bunch of Effect Filters that I pre-load into each image prior to processing using a privately created preset. A preset is a bunch of amendments that you can apply to a photo in one go. I have one with all of my commonly used Effect Filters loaded and ready to go, but unselected. These are (in no particular order):

• Vignette: Big softy, set at 50% and active
• Curves: Unmodified but active

The following Filters are pre-loaded but in an inactive state:

• Tone Enhancer: Clarity
• Tone Enhancer: Shadows Lighter
• Tone Enhancer: Highlights Darker
• Tone Enhancer: Midtones Lighter
• Tone Enhancer: Tonal Contrast
• Colo(u)r Enhancer: Increase Colour
• Colo(u)r Enhancer: Warmer
• Dynamic Contrast
• Glow: Angel Glow

Many of these effects could be achieved using the Curves filter, but I find it convenient to process my images this way. Each of the Filters is clearly labelled and ready to switch on at the click of a radio button. In addition, I have four Local Effect Filters charged and ready to go: Darken (-1 EV), Lighten (+1 EV), Dehaze Adjustment and Vibrance Adjustment. The main differences between Effects and Local is that the former are normally applied to the whole image by default and the latter applied locally with a brush and the Local Effects are basically a repetition of the global adjustments of the Develop tab, whereas the Filter Effects go way beyond this.

I'll briefly go through all the edits I made to this image together with a quick explanation of why I did it and what part(s) of the image I did it to. The differences between individual images will be very subtle, especially at this resolution, but compare the starting point above with the final image at the bottom and you'll find a very different picture.

Crop

My first step with any image is to crop and level it using the crop tool. Here I just pulled in a bit of the image from each end and lost some of the unnecessary grass in the foreground. At the same time, I stamped out the awkward sapling centre picture and the electric fence by the logs and dulled down the repaired plank on the left of the bridge by locally reducing the saturation.

Colour Enhancer: Increase Colour

Applied just to the river to increase the saturation of the water. Applied using a gradient filter to exclude the trees in the middle as well as the grass in the foreground. Set at 40% opacity.

Tone Enhancer: Darken Shadows

The HDR process took a little too much contrast away, so instead of the usual Lighten Shadows, I used the opposite to bring a bit more substance to the image. Applied globally at 50% opacity.

Dynamic Contrast

There are at least five ways of adding sharpening detail in ON1; Structure in the Develop module or Sharpening, Tone Enhancer: Clarity, Tone Enhancer: Tonal Contrast and Dynamic Contrast. All five do the same or similar things in subtly different ways: they increase contrast in small areas of the image where there are light and dark edges - so-called micro contrast. The theory isn't terribly important, but it's something that should be used with caution. It's easy to add a ton of clarity (generic term, common also to Lightroom) to a picture and it'll look awful.

The different types of sharpening work best for different aspects of a picture. For example, I've found in ON1 that a little bit of Tonal Contrast works really well on adding a bit of detail to forest foliage. Dynamic Contrast, on the other hand, is great at bringing out a bit of detail in wood grain or rocks. In this image I used a masking brush to apply a little Dynamic Contrast to the rocks left and right of the bridge by the water and a little more to the bridge itself.

Tone Enhancer: Tonal Contrast

As mentioned above, a little Tonal Contrast gives a hint of crispness to the edges in forests. I used a radial filter here to add it to the centre of the picture.

Colour Enhancer

Painted in to reduce the saturation and brightness of the grass bank in the foreground whilst at the same time shifting the hue from green towards yellow. The bright green was too dominant in the photo and keeping the eye from progressing to the water and autumn foliage.

Colour Enhancer: Warmer, Colour Enhancer: Fall

Added globally at 100% and 50% respectively to bring out the autumn colours.

HDR Look

I very rarely use this quite strong filter, but here I used it at 45% across the picture to add a bit of brightness to the picture. A Sunshine filter would have had a similar effect, increasing brightness and decreasing darker portions of the photo.

Sunshine

Having mentioned the Sunshine filter, I thought I'd try it out. It adds an extra pep to the image too. Applied at 50% globally.

Glow: Orten

The Orten Effect is an interesting one, again I don't use it often. It adds a sort of ghostly glow that fits a slightly gloomy image like this.

And that's more or less it. I desaturated a tree that looked a tad over-saturated, darkened the grass bank a little more, opened up (lightened) the shadows under the roof of the bridge, lightened the rocks to the left of the bridge and I think that's about as good as I can get it. It sounds like a lot, and it is a lot more than I would do on most images - the easy ones I process in about 2-5 min, but it was necessary and, I believe, worth the effort.

The Covered Bridge || Olympus 7 Shot HDR Panorama