Shortly after the sun rises is good for me, too. Shadows are soft and indistinct, and blooms and leaves are fresh and plumped full of moisture.

Great tip, Hetty!

Hetty, I would love to see a whole tutorial on taking good photos of plants. How about you add a tip each day with a photo comparison just the way you did today?
Pretty please?

I agree.......before sunrise, just before sunset......or my favorite which is a cloudy overcast day like today.

I like cloudy best, which is hard to get where I am so I often make shade somehow.

CindiKS said:Hetty, I would love to see a whole tutorial on taking good photos of plants. How about you add a tip each day with a photo comparison just the way you did today?
Pretty please?

Purty please !!!

And you other great photographers can add tips to the thread. It would help us Newbies a lot.

CindiKS said:Hetty, I would love to see a whole tutorial on taking good photos of plants. How about you add a tip each day with a photo comparison just the way you did today?
Pretty please?

overcast days, and morning sun are my favorite times.. my morning sun is dappled though... or right at dusk with a flash.. the flash will blacken the background and focus on your flower
afternoon sun & then morning sun

sun too harsh on the shot and morning sun

Thank you all.
I'll try and see if I have some other ideas on this topic. I do like using the flash at night but I don't think I get a very true representation of the real flower color that way. That is very important to me.

I take MANY pictures in the early morning (being a morning person ) and am also grateful for an occasional cloudy day for photography purposes. However, again, I find I get the truest color just before dark.

here is a good example of a night shot at dusk... now I could see out there just fine.. there was just enough sun to see .. but the flash will darken the background.. I have lots of these shots that I am not finding at the moment not sure if I have any comparison shots though

took some this morning.. the overcast is perfect to show you the differences
far away flash ... no good

far away no flash... better.. sorry a bit out of focus

close up flash good

close up no flash .. good too.. but true color is muted

not sure if we will get the sun needed today to show you the wash out colors of mid day

one more set... close up flash.. good

close up no flash.. true color is a bit muted

far away flash .. not good at all


you really do have to play with your photos and see how strong your flash is .. when to use it and when not to... best to take the photos like I just did and see which you like best.. then you will know when and where to use a flash or not

Also, SOME stuff can be handled in post-processing... but it's always best to get it right when you take the picture, and minimize the post-processing. The biggest problem I see with digital cameras is that too many people take a picture and just upload it straight from the camera. that's almost never a good idea.

There are lots of "dummies guides" out there on photography, digital photography, and post processing, but the book that helped me the most back when I was teaching myself photography (with my Pentax K1000 totally manual SLR) was Kodak's "How to Take Great Pictures."


If you take pictures INdoors, check your camera settings. Most digital cameras have a menu setting that will compensate for the photo being taken indoors. It's usually called "white balance." As one example, it helps keep photos taken under flourescent lights from looking yellow.

A suggestion I got from the daylily forum here on ATP is to use my camera's "portrait" setting when taking pics of my flowers. It uses a shallower depth of field and helps blur the background. We had a couple photography threads going on in that forum, back in the spring.

The thread "Taking photos of daylilies" in Daylilies forum

The thread "Photography Equipment" in Daylilies forum

BTW, the current issue of Birds & Blooms has a 2page spread on photographing your pets in your garden, for those who are interested in that kind of thing. Great pictures, and some very useful tips.

processing is a great thing... I totally agree.. here is the non flash close up before and after processing.. in picasa all I did was use the slider for fill light
without flash

processed

the same flash close up.. untouched

oh I NEVER use the auto color in picasa... it will pick the main color in the photo and change everything.. some easy steps are not good ones

figures the photos I just took.. the auto color worked on... will have to find a bad example.. it does work sometimes.. most of the time.. not even close

ok here is a good one .. or bad one with the auto color.. the 1st is the original.. 2nd is auto color .. see how it turned it blueish

Thanks, so much.

I am busy trying to compile a file of all these great suggestions. Great info out there in the other suggested threads as well.

:thumbsup: Thanks for the referrals.

Maybe a class at my local camera store might help too. I am a hands on learner.

practicing always helps.. taking 10 shots of the same thing different ways.. and only keeping the one I like always works for me.. have to play with processing sometimes a great photo doesn't need touching up.. but most of the time a photo can always use a bit of tweaking.. here is Hetty's true color shot with just a slide of the fill light in picasa (hope you don't mind the use of your photo Hetty)