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Photographing Flowers

We’ve had a long, cold, snowy, winter. Spring is in the air. One of the joys of springtime are blooming flowers. Flowers can make great photographs. Take some of this advice, grab your camera, go out into the fresh air, and shoot some  flowers! 

Don’t be afraid to experiment. Try using wide angle and telephoto zoom lenses to shoot a field of flowers, an individual flower, or with a macro lens or extension tube, shoot a part of a flower. Think of the background for your flower shot. You may shoot with a narrow depth of field and blur out green leaves or other colored flowers. You can take a black board or piece of cloth and put it behind your flower to get a dramatic effect.

 If you are going to enlarge your beautiful print, you will want to use a tripod and cable release so it looks sharp and crisp. Be aware of wind; you may want to block it or use a clamp to hold the flower stem still.

 Lighting will affect your shot. For close ups, soft light is the best. Shoot as early and late in the day as possible. A nice effect is to shoot your flower when it is illuminated by backlight. If the sun is bright, you may want to use an umbrella to block it. To highlight an area of the flower, you can use a white reflector or even tin foil to shine on your subject. A polarizing filter on your lens will help saturate the colors. If it’s a gray day, don’t despair, it can be great light for close ups.

 Bring a small spray bottle with water in it and spray droplets on your flower to get that morning dew “refreshing” effect.

 If you want to really have some fun, join the HVA Photography Club and shoot flowers with us!

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Photographing Waterfalls

We haven’t had much snow so far this year, but as Spring approaches, there will be plenty of precipitation. Streams and rivers will become full, creating some beautiful waterfalls. Photographing waterfalls can be tricky if you want to achieve some ethereal effects. If you want to capture the burst of a waterfall, use a high shutter speed to freeze the action. If you want to show the flow and mystical motion of the water, you are going to have to use some equipment, planning, and thought.

            First, you will have to use a tripod. Attach your camera to a tripod and compose your shot. You will want to use a shutter speed of ½ second or longer to give the water that silky, flowing look. It is difficult to make an exposure this long on a sunny day. The technique works more easily in the shade, towards dusk, or on an overcast day. You can “cheat” a little by using a polarizing filter and a small aperture (f16 and higher).

As suggested in Outdoor Photographer, blurring the water’s motion usually looks best with small cascades or rapids, where the water flows and swirls around rocks or trees. A stationary object must be included or the whole image will look fuzzy.

Our club will have its inaugural meeting in May. Please call Dean or Irene at 585-425-9421 to sign up. If you get our answering machine, please speak clearly and give us your name, telephone number, and if applicable, your email address. We will be planning field trips with expert photographers giving us personalized advice. It will be a lot of fun and no matter what our skill level is, our photography will improve. We look forward to hearing from you.



Watkin’s Glen Park

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Shooting Snow!

Your HVA Photography Club will be providing articles or tips in the HVA Newsletter. As this is the last newsletter of the year, it seems apropos to discuss snow as a subject in our photography.

A Snow Job On Your Aperture!

Shooting snow is a challenge because of what it does to the light meter in your camera. The meter in the camera sees snow as a tremendous source of bright light. If you shine a bright light at a human eye, the pupil closes to let less light in. The aperture in your camera acts the same way as the pupil in a human eye. When it “sees” bright snow, it wants to “close down”. That may be OK if you want a picture of gray looking snow, but most interesting photographs have other objects in them that you want to see such as trees, animals, barns, people etc.. If the aperture is small and not letting a lot of light in, the light reflected off the other objects won’t be strong enough to get through the tiny aperture and hit the film. The resulting picture will show wonderful snow but dark objects. If you are taking a picture of a person, you may not be able to discern the face in your photograph.

Aperture Control!

To avoid seeing Johnny or Grandma as “The Shadow”, your 35mm Single Lens Reflex camera allows you to change the aperture. You can either use the little exposure compensation  dial by adding 1-1 ½ “stops” or you can open the aperture another way by changing your F-stop to a smaller number (confusing system isn’t it?). The smaller the F-stop number is, the larger the aperture is (who set up this system?). If you’re good in mathematics, think of the F-stop number as the denominator in a fraction. F4 would be ¼ and F22 would be 1/22. 1/22 is smaller than ¼! The aperture for F22 is smaller than F4. If it was up to me, I’d scrap this stupid F-stop system and use something less confusing. But, it’s not up to me!

Grandma’s gonna look good!

 Another nice effect by opening up the aperture with snow is, it looks even brighter. So the end result is, you’ll be able to see your subject in the picture and  the surrounding snow will look bright white and crisp. If you still have doubts about how the picture will turn out, you should “bracket”. Kodak loves it when we bracket! Bracketing means taking the same picture except at different exposures. You can either change the F-stops or the exposure time. So take multiple pictures at different F-stops or different exposure times. Another way to take the proper exposure is to zoom in and meter off your subject. Most cameras have an Auto Exposure (AE) Lock lever. Spot meter on Grandma’s face, push your AE lock, zoom back to your original composition, and shoot. If you have a point-and-shoot camera, get closer to grandma and use your flash. Grandma will be glad that you got a great shot and that she didn’t have to stand in the freezing cold any longer!

Add a little Drama!

The most dramatic times to take winter shots are at sunrise or sunset. Seeing as how I hate to get up early in the winter, I’m relegated to the sunset! Other good times may be during a storm. If you want to emphasize the snow flakes, you can use your flash and make them really stand out. If you want to emphasize the “storminess or windiness” you can use a longer exposure time and make the flakes coming down look a bit blurry or streaky. If you are in really bright sunlight and the snow gives off a glare, don’t forget to use your polarizer filter. If you want to add some “warmth” to your shot, use an 81B filter.

Come Join Us!

If this article interests you, don’t forget to join the photography club. No, you don’t have to be an expert to join. If you like taking good pictures with your camera, you’ll want to join us. We all have a lot to learn and we’ll have a great time doing it!
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