Desert Sunflower @ f5.6 / Photo by Steve Berardi
As nature photographers, we tend to have an obsession with tack sharp photos and will do almost anything to increase the sharpness just a tiny bit. After all, looking up close at a sharp photo of a dragonfly is one of the greatest rewards of photographing the natural world
But, sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a little sharpness for a better composition.
As an example, consider the photo above of a Desert Sunflower in front of a patch of Desert Sand Verbena (see original size photo too). There are three reasons why the sunflower isn’t as sharp as it could have been:
- The wind was blowing pretty hard, and constantly swaying the flower
- The camera’s sensor was not parallel to the most important plane of the flower
- A pretty large aperture was used (f/5.6), which limited depth of field
Of course, the wind was out of my control, so all I could do for that was wait for the calmest moment possible. But, the other two were in my control. Why didn’t I address these problems? [read more…]
Photo by Steve Berardi (shot with a Canon G10 point and shoot camera)
Although wildflowers are best photographed with an SLR camera, it’s still possible to take some pretty good shots with a plain old point and shoot camera. And, sometimes this may be the only camera you have with you at the time, either because you’re backpacking far into the wilderness and want to travel light, or maybe you haven’t made the jump to an SLR just yet.
The biggest problem you’ll run into with the point and shoot camera is the large depth of field you get from the super small sensor. This limits some of your options, but there’s a few ways to get around it, and as always, light also plays a huge role in the success of a photo.
So, here are a few tips for photographing wildflowers when you’re limited to a point and shoot camera: [read more…]
Bigelow's Monkeyflower / Photos by Steve Berardi
Which of the two photos above do you like better?
They were both taken of the same flower, with the same camera settings. The only difference between the two shots is the position of the camera.
I’ll take a wild guess that you like the first one more. And, I think this photo is better because it has more of an intimate and friendly feeling to it. [read more…]
Diagram by Jared C. Benedict (used under the CC-Attr-SA license)
I was planning to write about the three things that affect
depth of field this week, but by pure coincidence (seriously!), I discovered this great blog post that Brian Auer wrote a few days ago:
Three Ways to Control Depth of Field
I’d highly recommend checking it out. Brian did a nice job of explaining the three things that affect depth of field (aperture, camera to subject distance, and focal length), including some sample images too.
There’s a few things I’d like to add though: [read more…]
Today I’m happy to announce that my new eBook, Digital Wildflower Photography, is now available.
The first thing you’re probably wondering is how it’s different from the free eBook I released last spring. Well, this new one is over twice as long at 55 pages, and has a ton of new content.
While the free eBook was really just a collection of a few tips for getting better wildflower photos, this new ebook is more of a complete guide that will teach you how to take stunning wildflower photos and how to post-process them in Adobe Photoshop (CS and Elements 8). [read more…]
