We take a departure this week from the usual post perhaps to learn a “how to” or maybe more accurately “how not to”. Every person who owns a camera of any type, from the very poor quality output of an Iphone to the most advanced DSLR system eventually takes photographs of flowers. A very high percentage of these attempts are complete failures. Most are due one or two common mistakes-wrong time of day and/or wrong lighting conditions. The day may be bright and sunny and it may be convenient to be out between 10:00 in the morning and 3:00 or even 4:00 in the afternoon but the result will probably be deep ugly shadows, blown highlights, washed out colors and garish contrasts. In contrast look at the collection below of roses recently photographed by Sandy Pinto on an outing to the rose garden on the estate of John and Mabel Ringling in Sarasota FL. Notice the rich color, the clarity of the the details and the dark backgrounds. Why? It was cloudy and even raining! On some shots the beads of water can be clearly seen.

Sandy Pinto - Four Roses

Sandy used her Nikon D90 with an 18-105mm lens zoomed to its maximum of 105mm to isolate each flower and an f/stop of 5.6 to blur the backgrounds. She used her tripod but not the camera’s flash. In other words the equipment was standard fare and no special techniques were used. The possible drawback is a blue or cold color tint due to the overcast sky but this can be easily corrected in post editing, particularly so with RAW files. Keep these hints in mind the next time you go flower hunting.

To view each of the rose photos separately and with increased resolution, click the links below:

* Top left
* Top right
* Bottom left
* Bottom right