I'm starting to take more pictures of my little beauties. Here are some pictures of Earlybird Orangeade

This first pic is in morning shadow. It avoids the harshness of a full sun shot, but is grainy:



The second picture was taken in full sun, but looks overexposed:



The third picture is in full sun, but with exposure down .03 or "one click." I will also experiment with adding exposure to any future morning pictures.



I usually take the pictures with as much zoom as possible. I might try adding exposure to the morning shade ones.

In full sun, I think the best rule is to turn down the exposure. Any other hints?!

I wonder if using a fill flash in full sun would yield good results?

Most times in full sun, I shoot in manual mode with the aperture set at 25 or higher, and the shutter at around 300 depending upon the lens. I add a fill in flash and make adjustments according how I want the pic to look. I shoot the same pic in auto and 'p' modes just to see what parameters the camera chooses. Some photographers use a white umbrella in full sun. Sometimes I use my own shadow as shade. I really find that early morning makes the best pics for me. It's before the thrips or snails start to chew on the blooms, and before the afternoon suns fades the color.

@Scapehunter

@Scapehunter,
To avoid grain, set your ISO low, I normally keep mine on two hundred, but of course that changes with the light. Exposure is the key to it all, even color varies a lot with different exposures. A cloudy day is a daylily photographers best friend I think, both for the photos and the photographer. Use the rule of thirds when composing, and keep an eye on the background. I love shooting at 60x, with a wide open aperture, but you have to back way off and have a very study hand.
That about sums up my tips!

Here is a picture taken in full sun at 2:30 in the afternoon. For this much light I found cutting back the exposure two clicks (.07) on my Olympus E-510 created the best image. The shadows are a bit over-dark, but the flower color is less over-exposed.

OK, here's the same photo taken at .07 exposure. It left the shadows a bit too dark. I used Microsoft "Photo Gallery," which I think comes installed on a lot of computers.

I clicked Fine Tune>Adjust Exposure>Shadows. This lightened the shadows, without lightened the flower color. It might be hard to see, but if you download both photos, you will be able to go back and forth and see the difference.

For me, this is something I have just learned and helps with the main problem I had with turning the exposure down to prevent the blooms from washing out--dark areas became too dark.

Now that both pix are uploaded, I think one can see the difference even in the smaller pix that are in the thread.

Photo Gallery is great to me, so simple and just a little adjustment sometimes makes all the difference. On good days I don't have to crop or make adjustments, just go with the photo as is. On bad days I do resort to Photo Gallery, but if much adjustment is made the photo is just not worth posting I have found. Sometimes the camera will just not do the color justice, and Photo Gallery can help give a much more realistic color to those photos.

to the Daylily forum. I need all the tips I can get on better pic taking!!