This is beginning to be a busy spring. I expect that isn’t news to those in my area that have spent all day doing yard work the past few days. But for many photographers thoughts kept wandering to, “That could make a good picture.”
I really wanted to do some photography in my wife’s garden. The nights are still cold, but the days have been almost hot, and with that heat the first of her flowers are beginning to bloom. My goal is always to photograph what happens in the garden with the changing seasons.
There is always something in the garden no matter the weather, be it snow, rain, or like today, high clouds. The slight overcast day was perfect for my subjects. Bright sunny days increase the contrast of scenes, making it hard to capture details in the extremes and I wanted to retain what details I could. The diffused daylight reduced the number of f/stops from black to white.
My setup is a 200mm macro lens and depending on my mood and the light, either a ring-flash, a reflector, or as I used this afternoon, a wireless, off-camera flash. Outdoor portraits, whether of people or flowers, in my opinion, aren’t that interesting when one only relies on illumination from the sun. Flash, on or off-camera, or even a reflector, adds dimension and depth that makes for a much better image.
I mounted my flash on a small two-foot stand and carried a tiny six-inch tripod if I needed the light to be lower to the ground, and this time I didn’t use a tripod because the few flowers were close to the ground and I prefer shooting very low level. That means almost every shot is made while lying on the ground.
By the time I could get out to the garden the sun was low and, sometimes, a heavy overcast. Perfect light.
All I had to do was put the flash to one side and adjust my shutterspeed to decrease the bright ambient light.
Today’s TTL (through the lens) flash is amazing. Previous generations recall when the flash/camera sync speed was limiting and we could only use a flash at 1/60th of a second! How did one survive?
Today I moved my shutter between 200th of a second and 8000th of a second. That gave me lots of control over the ambient light and easily allowed me to move my aperture to increase or decrease depth of field. My advice is check your camera’s manual, read about, and set the camera to hi-speed flash sync, if available.
I’ll include a brief explanation of TTL flash. When the shutter is tripped, the light from the flash fires off and hits the subject. Then that light from the flash bounces back to the camera, and a sensor reads it as it builds up exposure. The in-camera computer determines when the light has massed enough light for the correct exposure and turns off the flash.
The photographer controls the flash, rather than the flash controlling our photography. With TTL technology the camera’s computer provides the correct exposure regardless of the aperture, or flash-to-subject distance. TTL technology puts the control of depth-of-field back into the hands of the photographer.
Most of the time I kept my flash on TTL, increasing or decreasing the power depending on how far I positioned the flash from a flower, and only selected manual flash as I began losing the light.
Books on garden photography recommend morning when everything is fresh, but I didn’t get a chance till late in the afternoon, as I was occupied building a temporary yard for six new chicks.
We had an early morning marauder a few months ago, probably a bobcat, reducing my laying hens to two. I have reinforced the chicken yard and think everybody’s safe now.
I’ll give the garden another couple week’s growth and try for that fresh morning (and hopefully some overcast) light.
I’ll repeat what I wrote about garden photography last February, “Just about anytime is good for a dedicated photographer to make photographs. My advice is to be creative, have fun, and don’t worry about failures. Open them up on the computer, learn something from them, then quickly delete. Of course, some tweaking with PhotoShop always helps and, for those photographers that are like me trying for something different, anytime and any conditions will be just fine.”
These are my thoughts this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net. Stop by Enman’s Camera at 423 Tranquille Road in Kamloops. And if you want an experienced photographer please call me at 250-371-3069. I also sell an interesting selection of used photographic equipment.