Wildflower Photography
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There's probably no outdoor activity which gets you as close to wildflowers as camping. Have you ever wanted to photograph those blooms growing by the door of your tent? Maybe you'd like to check your pictures against the flower book for identification purposes when you get home. Or, possibly, you'd just like a pleasant souvenir of your visit.
You could have been put off by some "expert" telling you about all the expensive equipment you'll need. I'd like to tell you how to take reasonable pictures with what you may already have. A single-lens reflex (SLR) camera is best, because it works on the principle of "what you see is what you get".
If you're dealing with larger flowers, you can get reasonable results with a compact camera. For smaller ones, you'd need to carry out lengthy experiments to see just how close you can get to your subject. You should also understand parallax, and how much you have to "aim off" to get the flower where you want it in your picture. It's not impossible, but it takes a lot of trial and error, possibly on your garden flowers, to get it right.
If you are going shopping for extras, you'll find a tripod useful, and maybe some close-up lenses. These screw or clip to your camera lens, and come in varying strengths called dioptres. The higher the dioptre, the closer you can get to your subject, and you can usually combine two or more to arrive at an even higher figure.
Experts will say rude things about their optical quality, and they're right If you insist on pin-sharp perfection, don't use them. But, if it's "just for the album", why not?
Because you're getting by without all those fancy lenses and stuff, a piece of absolutely essential non-photographic kit has to be a poncho or a ground-sheet. That's because you need to get really close to your subject, and to do that, you have to get right down there among the thistles and the cow-pats. You'll take care, of course, not to crush or trample other flowers, just to get at the specimen you're interested in.
A useful, rather than essential extra is some kind of portable reflector. Flowers aren't always obliging enough to grow where there's plenty of light, so you need some way of bringing extra light in without resorting to the artificiality of flash. But, if you don't have a purpose-built reflector with you, anything light-coloured, like your map, or even your shirt will do.
There are some other things you can use your clothing for in wildflower photography. It might, therefore, be an idea to take a few spares along, to ensure that you don't have to strip completely to set your picture up!
You might, for instance, find a bloom of great beauty growing on a rubbish tip. You don't want such an ugly surround so you need to hide it somehow. Maybe you just want a nice background. Any suitable material will do, and if you didn't think to bring any, your jacket or shirt might just fill in. I used to find an old Army camouflage hat useful for an impromptu backdrop. This had the added advantage that it was free-standing, and didn't need any other means of support.
When the wind is blowing your plant about too much for successful photography, your rucksack could be used to make a wind-break. If you aren't carrying one, you could, of course, improvise with your clothing. But you may not have to take it off, because you, yourself, make a pretty good windbreak ... if you aren't using yourself for something else!
In strong light, deep black shadow across your subject can spoil the picture completely. To overcome this, photographers use a gizmo called a diffuser. This distributes the light more evenly, and lessens the contrast between the shadowed and lit areas. But you don't absolutely need one. You can get the same effect by standing so that your shadow falls on the flower. Alternatively you can simply wait for a cloud to pass in front of the sun, or even choose an overcast day for your shoot.
Other good conditions to wait for to make successful flower images are those times when it brightens up after a shower, and early morning, when there's dew ...... or sometimes better still ....... frost on the ground. You can do a little cheat by taking a spray bottle of water to the plant, but it isn't quite as convincing as the real thing.
I recently took part in an Internet discussion on wildflower photography. A constantly recurring topic was the identification of subjects, and what's the best field guide. Like so many questions, this has to be answered with another question. How badly do you need to know?
If you were photographing for a nature magazine, you would stand little chance of your pictures being accepted unless you knew all there was to know about the flower. But, if it's just for pleasure in the flower's beauty, does it make it any less beautiful if you don't know its name?
I once entered a competition with a picture of an orchid. Since orchids hybridise so readily, nobody could tell me if it was a Marsh Orchid or a Spotted Orchid. The only way you can tell them apart for certain is to dig them up and examine the roots. That's bad practice at best, and might well be illegal in some places.
So, I simply called it Orchid'. It won a small prize and, nobody ever asked what kind of orchid it was!
But I did once put a picture called Wildflowers: Thetford Forest' into an exhibition. It was barely on the wall for an hour, before some sad git crossed out the title, and scrawled in Bogbean'.
If you really want to know what the flower is, there are field guides to suit all pockets. The less expensive ones, however, do often contain only the commoner flowers, which you may already be familiar with. Less well-known blooms you may only find in a more expensive ....... and bigger and heavier ....... tome, which you might be unwilling to drag around the fields with you.
But, if you decided to keep such a book at home, you could always check your pictures against it when they came back. Isn't that where we came in?