I am often the person with a tripod in the middle of a public rose garden. I also sell my rose and flower images at rose shows. People often approach me to tell me about their own love of roses and photography. I hear their joy and also their frustration. I repeatedly hear, “They just don’t look as good as what I see through the lens.”
And now that most everyone has a digital camera I often hear, “It’s great not having to buy film. I can shoot hundreds of pictures and just delete the ones I don’t like. You’re bound to get a good one sooner or later. Right?” Here are a few things that might help you increase your ability to get what you see and the rush of getting “a good one.”
The technical part of photography is important, but even more important is how we think and feel as we take the picture. In your mind try and recreate looking at your 3x5s after you get them back from the store or when you are looking at you digital images on the screen. The first thing we notice are all the things that we didn’t notice when we were taking the picture. This is especially true when we take pictures of roses. Because they are so beautiful, in and of themselves, we believe that every picture is going to be beautiful. A good trick to use with any picture is to imagine that you are seeing the final print when you are looking through the lens.
This picture taken at The Finili Gardens, South of San Francisco, is a good example of a distracting background. The rose is spectacular, but our eye is being sent in a dozen different directions.
A rose is a rose, but a picture of a rose is a picture. We need to make up for the fact that we are not in the presence of the rose. One way to do this is to eliminate the background completely. You can do this in PhotoShop or any other photo-manipulation software by selecting the rose and darkening or filling in the background. You can also place a piece of paper or colored cloth behind the rose.
Here is the same picture with a dark background. I also cropped and rotated the image. While we are looking at this image, here are a few things more things that we can say about what makes it work as a photograph. The background, the “negative space,” is, itself, an element in the picture. Its shape “holds” the rose.
Notice the placement of the bud. The line of white is picked up by the edge of the red rose petal. The bud also acts as an arrow to counter balance the strong left to right line created by the red slanted line of the petal behind the bud. Our eye moves around the image. Every element has equal importance and interest.
When looking at a photograph, our eye always goes to the brightest spot first. It works in this image because of the psychological “weight” and interest of the bud and the fact that our mind is also attracted to identifying patterns. Because our eye move from the bright spot in the back to the bud in the foreground the illusion of depth is created in our two-dimensional image.
As a side note, I must tell you that all these rules and “thinking” rarely come into play when I am taking a picture. All this is now second nature and, in truth, I just keep looking at what I am taking a picture of and when it feels right I push the button. It’s good to know all the rules and how the eye works, but don’t let information get in the way of your inspiration.
While looking at web sites that talked about taking pictures, I read said that you should never take rose pictures in direct sunlight. It is true that an overcast sky will create a wonderful even light, yet direct light works great for this picture.
Here is a example of that great, even light of an overcast sky. This image uses the dark foliage of the roses as the darkened background to remove unwanted distractions and set the off the beauty and light of the rose.
I often think of taking pictures of roses the same way I think of taking portraits. Each is an individual with unique attributes to accentuate or play down. The swirl at the center of this rose is what caught my eye. By placing the top of the swirl in front of the slightly darker background it becomes more visible and draws attention to itself. Having the leaf cover the front petal still allows the viewer to imagine the rest of the petal. At the same time, it helps to keep the attention on the center swirl.
There are some roses that have a unique feature. Cropping or using a macro lens to zoom in on a detail can make an exciting image. As many of you digital photographers have already discovered, the more you crop, the more the image pixelizes. The larger file you start with, the more opportunity you have to crop.
This image was taken on film using a macro lens. A macro lens allows you to get very close. It also has a very narrow depth of field. In this case the depth of focus works great to bring out the unique folds and design of the petals. If you have a subject that you want to be in focus from front to back you will have to use a small aperture like f/16 or f/22. This will make the exposure very long, so, to attempt it you will need a tripod and a shutter release to keep the camera still during the exposure. Instead of using a cable release I often just use the self-timer on the camera to trigger the shutter.
This image also points out the fact that all photographs are, in one way or another, manipulated. When I started taking digital pictures I tried to stay as “true” to the original image as possible. Then something wonderful happened. I cropped an image to reveal a very interesting and intriguing section. The pixels were huge. I was new to PhotoShop and I just started playing around with different effects and filters.
After a few hours this image was born. This image was the birth of a whole new career in flower photography and a whole new respect for what PhotoShop can do to enhance an image. It is a kind of visual language. The more you use it the fluent you become. I will also note that it is great, not just for changing an image, it is also great for getting the image to appear more like it does in real life.
One additional tip if you try this on your own. When I finished creating this image it was less than one megabyte and only an inch by an inch at 300 dpi in size. When I tried to resize it to 10x10, it turned to mush. Here’s the trick. When you resized it in PhotoShop or another software, use the “percent” feature and keep upsizing 110% at a time until you get it to the size you want. I have printed this image up to 30x30 inches and am still pleased with the results.
When you go out to take photographs don’t look for pictures, just look. The photographs will rise out of your looking and they will be more personal to your own unique vision. So, keep taking pictures. Keep making mistakes. As photographer Diane Arbus once said, “If you are not making mistakes, you are not trying anything new.”
I’ll leave you with one thought and a final image.
As much as possible, I try to take pictures with the eye of the amateur. The word is derived from the French word for love, “amour.” To take pictures as an amateur is to take pictures for the love of it. The shape of this rose is exactly as I found it, on a beautiful sun lit day, at the rose garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
