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.

In My Mother's Garden

As I start writing this, I'm at my parent's house - now actually my father's house. My mother passed away two weeks ago today and her funeral was yesterday. Quarantine rules mean that apart from attending the funeral we're not allowed to leave the property and so as well as bringing a couple of books to read, I brought my camera with me to capture some of the beauty of the garden that she and dad have created in the 20 years that they've lived in their small village in rural Somerset.

Ann Page, 31.05.1941-16.03.2021 🕆

Even though dad is the son of a horticulturalist, it was mum who was the driving force in the garden, suggesting the design and choosing the plants. Her pride and joy was the large rockery bisecting the garden and separating the upper and lower lawns.

Mum tending her beloved rockery back in happier times in 2017

The flowers and shrubs were definitely her domain and it's a real treat in spring, especially the rockery with its primulas, grape hyacinths and pasque flowers. It also forms a great home for ladybirds and spiders at this time of year. Who knew that spiders could be so cute large? (my wife certainly doesn't).

Grape hyacinths, looking towards the house

Mum had turned her hand to a number of things over the years, but was predominantly a home-builder, at least while my sister Hilary and I were growing up. She was an excellent cook and seamstress, a great hostess and had a wicked sense of humour, something that she maintained until quite near the end. It was always easy to get a twinkle out of her eye with a clever aside, even when she was struggling with words herself as she did on and off for the last few years. Especially if it was a subtle sotto voce dig at dad (who doesn't have the best hearing, bless him). Always guaranteed to elicit a sly grin!

One of Mum's greatest strengths was putting other people first, whether that meant being a stay-at-home mum for the most part or driving me all over the southern half of the UK when I was looking for university places. She loved singing, was a reluctant leader when they asked her to head up the WI or Mother's Union and loved it when she could get fresh strawberries and cream on her birthday at the end of May. In the days before the universal availability of such exotic fruits throughout the year this was always a bit touch and go. She was a great role model.

Pasque Flower

Pasque Flowers Contra Jour

As her health declined over the last years I had the impression that she was always at her best when we were visiting or when she came to us, slumping somewhat afterwards. Dad did a great job looking after her whilst that was still possible for someone in his 70s to do, taking over essentially all the domestic duties in the house over time. When we were back at Christmas 2019 the rest of us had settled in to the living room after dinner and mum was missing. Partly out of concern for what she might be up to and partly wanting to just chat with her for a bit I went looking for her and found her brightly washing up in the kitchen. It was the first time she'd done this for at least two years and we were both excited about how well she was doing and she expressed a wish to be able to come out and visit us at Easter. It was the last time that she was this well. By Easter 2020 travel restrictions were in place and her health had deteriorated again. Those precious minutes we had together in the kitchen are a great memory to hold on to.

One of the neighbours fashioned this beautiful sheath for mum's coffin

Communicating with mum has been very difficult over the last year. We were able to visit her through the window of her care home back in September just after she came out of Yeovil hospital after a protracted stay. That was the last time we saw her. Since then visiting rules at the care home have meant that only one designated visitor was allowed. Even if we had flown home and gone through the 10-day enforced quarantine, we wouldn't have been able to visit her.

Apple blossom in the Spring

Ladybird

Perrywinkle

Dandelion Flower

Telephoning was extremely difficult - she couldn't work out what to do with the smart phones offered her by the home to communicate and video calls only made her upset. In the end I resorted to old fashioned communication and wrote her a letter a week, enclosing a photo or two that I'd taken recently. Only a single page each time, letting her know what the family was up to or reassuring her when she moved home in February that we still knew where she was and she didn't need to fret - something in black and white that the carers could re-read to her when she got upset or forgot. Of all the photos I sent the most crinkled one - the one she'd apparently held in her hand the most - was a summit shot of Sharon and me in the Bavarian Alps. 

Letters to Mum

Spending the week with dad was the right thing to do despite all the hurdles involved in international travel at the moment. Although I think we'd all done our 'letting go' in the months if not years before as mum's ability to interact with her surroundings had slowly declined, it was important to say goodbye and be together again as family.

We'll miss you mum, and we certainly won't forget you!

Goodbye Mum, you won't be(e) forgotten!

Wood pigeon, ubiquitous to our garden

Wysteria Bud

Rockery Flowers

Garden Spider

Last Year's Poppy

Daffodils

The Wrong Mountain

In future, I think we'll stick to doing winter tours that we know from the summer. Yesterday The Wife and I embarked on a winter tour from one of the books I bought her for Christmas. It was supposed to take us up the 1542 m Reuterwanne above Jungholz, a small Austrian village that is accessible to Germany during the lockdown due to the fact that it exists as an enclave into Germany. Who knows what they were drinking when they drew up the borders after WWII?, but this is definitely a weird one.

From the Pfeiffenberg || Olympus 13 mm, f/8, 1/1000 s, ISO 200 

Instead we ended up on the 1458 m Pfeiffenberg because we followed the tracks in the snow. Although most of the valley snow has disappeared, it snowed again on Friday. With a cold but sunny forecast for Saturday we decided that it would be rude to sit at home doing nothing and decided to head out to the hills once more. We were treated to a day of two halves. Actually, to be more accurate, we had a foggy day with a sunny interlude because the fog rolled in again as we came down the mountain, giving us some really special images, but more of that later.

Frosty Trees || Olympus 34 mm, f/8, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

We set off from a surprisingly empty car park in Jungholz - whether people were intimidated by driving into Austria (😮), they'd been put off by the fog, or whether in March they'd simply had enough of the snow, there simply weren't that many people under way, which suited us just fine. Finding the first landmark on the tour was easy since it simply required us to follow the signposts to the Stubentalalpe. The book (and signs) had the path following up the hillside behind the hut to the Reuterwanne and so we blindly followed the tracks leading up the hillside. What we failed to see was where the path to the Reuterwanne diverged and so we found ourselves atop the wrong mountain with no discernible path to getting on the right one.

The Process

But never mind, because we came home with an SD card full of 'keepers' and memories of a lovely winter tour pretty much on our own. A keeper is a photo that I'll keep (duh!) and show either here, Instagram or on my private Facebook page. Not necessarily the best of the best, but good enough to air publicly. After years of photography, I have developed a clear sorting method for photos at the end of the day. I'll import the photos directly into ON1, applying my own private preset - a set of standard modifications that I use during RAW processing. Almost all of these are not actually applied, but available to be used at a single click rather than diving through various menus. During import, I also back the photos up to an external USB hard drive. This has actually saved my butt once recently too as I managed to delete a whole folder worth of photos from my laptop.

Keeper or Not? || Olympus 47 mm, f/8, 1/1000 s, ISO 400 

Once imported, I use the ***** system to indicate which photos I actually want to process with a single star. I'll then go through these one by one, applying the edits I think best enhance the photo to emphasise the aspect of the image that really caught my attention. The edits that I'm happy with I'll give two stars to. These are the images I end up exporting to jpg from ON1, most of which will end up being published somewhere. I tend not to be overly selective here. I have one friend who posts perhaps a couple of photos there a month and they're really top-notch images. I'm a bit more indiscriminate and tend to spray my images everywhere. The really good ones will get three stars, but that's perhaps a small handful of images in a month.

The Foggy Half

Photographing isn't necessarily the first thing you think about doing in fog - but the results can be amazing. I got a couple of really painterly images from yesterday's tour that couldn't have been taken in any other conditions.  This first one of the shed in the snow was actually the very first image I took of the day. This I might even classify as a three star image. Note that it thumbs its nose completely at the rule of thirds etc., but it works, for me at least. Great way to start the day

Lone Shed || Olympus 29 mm, f/6.3, 1/1000 s, ISO 400

As well as the fresh snow there was a wicked hoarfrost as we walked up out of the village due to the freezing fog. We tend to think of nature as a constant, what's there today will be there tomorrow, but these photos tell a different story. Even as I write this 24 h after taking the photos, I know that they were unique, unrepeatable snapshots in time. Never again will that shed scene look exactly like that. Never again will that branch have that constellation of ice crystals. The same is the case for images with powerful clouds. Sobering thoughts.

Ice Crystals || Olympus  100 mm, f/11, 1/160 s, ISO 400

I decreased the aperture to f/11 here to increase the depth of field on the crystals. F/8, my standard aperture for this lens, just wasn't doing it and I didn't want to stop down too much further as it would have reduced the shutter speed to a level where motion blur might start becoming an issue. A lot of photographers only talk about aperture as a means to control depth of field, but it's only one of three factors influencing how much of your scene will be in focus alongside focal length and focal distance (how long your lens is and how close you are to the subject respectively).

Once we reached the Stubentalalpe we were out in the brilliant blue skies of an early spring day - after all meteorological spring started last week and we continued enjoying that light until we came down again after lunch. There was fog below us and rolling over the tops every now and then, but by and large it was pure sunshine until we descended back to the hut.

Standing Out and Hidden || Olympus 20 mm, f/8, 1/250 s, ISO 200

Snaking our way back down the tarmac to Jungholz at the end of our tour we came across this group of trees across the road. At a first glance the images look black and white, but they're full colour as you can see if you look at the snow poles and trail sign. An interesting set of images that aren't quite my usual style, but I really like them and could imagine them looking good printed on wood.

The Sunny Half

Once we'd reached the Stubentalalpe it was blue skies all the way, giving rise to a different sort of monochrome - white and blue instead of black and white. The colour of the fir trees was essentially non-existent given the bright light. Normally I would have had my CPL polarising filter on in conditions like this, but because the scene was so bright anyway I decided not to use it as it would have made the skies even darker and I was looking for some brighter images.

At the Stubentalalpe || Olympus 21 mm, f/8, 1/2500 s, ISO 400

Arriving at the Pfeiffenberg we found this delightful little wooden cross. At this point we thought we were still on the right path - we weren't -  and could see the Reuterwanne but couldn't clearly see how to get to it. Again, a unique image. Never again will this particular snow pattern exist to be photographed.

Pfeffenberg || Olympus 66 mm, f/5.6, 1/4000 s, ISO 200 

This next image is a complete fake! The path ran through the snow to the left of the drift. Apart from looking ugly, I wanted to see how far I could take the image correction. There are a couple of blotches that I might be able to correct with a little more effort, but the resulting image is adequate without being a showstopper. This is about the limit of corrections that I'll apply to an image outside of focus or exposure bracketing. I won't do sky replacements, for example, not because it's wrong per se, but photography for me is about conveying the beauty of what I saw and experienced. There's an inherent authenticity involved. This is probably a step too far.

Drifts || Olympus 23 mm, f/4.5, 1/6400 s, ISO 200 

Coming off the top we descended into a mini winter wonderland of baby fir trees. You can clearly see the valley fog in this photo. The trail through the snow is the same one as the shot of the drifts, demonstrating the extent of the 'corrections' that were necessary.

Winter Wonderland ||  Olympus HR 12 mm, f/8, 1/1250 s, ISO 200

And I can't come away from a trip to the mountains without a photo of a tree stump!

The Stump || Olympus 31 mm, f/8, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

Descending further we came across a mini plateau with a series of deciduous trees that still had snow and/or hoarfrost on the branches giving rise to this fantastic vista - as well as providing a great spot for lunch. 

Ming Vase-Landscape ||  Olympus 12 mm, f/8, 1/1600 s, ISO 200

Sat opposite this vista for quite a while gave me plenty of opportunity to 'work the composition' as the profi's would put it, and I tried a number of approaches including two with some 'foreground interest', but as so often with these scenes for me, I found the best image to have been my first 'instinct' shot when I arrived at the scene. The others seem contrived somehow with the foreground detracting from the simplicity of the scene that this one conveys nicely rather than adding to it.

Long Pines ||  Olympus 75 mm, f/8, 1/1250 s, ISO 200

It was also nice light to catch a couple of rare up close shots of Sharon in her natural element - the mountains.

The Wife ||  Olympus 80 mm, f/7.1, 1/1000 s, ISO 200

Mahlzeit! ||  Olympus 12 mm, f/7.1, 1/2000 s, ISO 200

So that was our Saturday morning. What did you get up to, anything interesting?