Composition tips for flowers?

Yes, please!

If I do that I do get readings in the 20/255 region on the lighter areas (as expected!); but these cannot be seen on the useless histogram! (See my edit to my earlier reply.)

David

Yes;)
And with the gardener, too, btw (Queen Mary's Garden).

"In brilliantly colored images, detail in the weakest ink—the
unwanted color—is critical. If you don’t have it, build it."
www.ledet.com/margulis/Poetry.pdf

That should be good for fuchsias and buttercups, which are glossy.

Don

Are you shooting something like floral competition photos, some flowers in a garden, or something that a flower shop could use on their website? Maybe point us to an example of what kind of photo you would like to shoot?

I'm a volunteer photographer for our local nature preserve and provide content for our website and social media. The motivation is to show off our native flowering plants in a natural habitat. For these kinds of photos, I've found the background is at least as important as the flower itself.

Any ol' photo composition guide or article has a section on contrast - that's contrast in light/dark, near/far, complementary colors. These are very useful for floral photography. If the flower attracts bees, I try to include one for some extra interest.

Lately, I've been experimenting with using ultra-wide lenses in floral photography. The ultra-wides I have focus pretty close and have around the right magnification and DOF for flowers. The background covers a wider field of view too. That makes them easier to use in the field than a macro.

Try this ... in FireFox right-click to download:

kronometric.org/phot/color/ShowImage.exe

It's really old 32-bit - your Operating System might not like it - if so, sorry. Still runs on my 64-bit Win 7 Dell ...

Firefox didnt like it, Windows didnt like it. I ignored the warnings and it runs on my Win10 machine. No instructions about using it.

The RGB histogram looks identical to that in DXO PL5 -- in size and icons and text surrounding the graph! Did it come from there, or did DXO incorporate it?

David

Not many buttons so pretty easy - I never found any instructions either - let me know if you need a step-by-step for a specific task.

Sorry, I'm no great fan of DxO, never used or learned it, so can't help there ...

I'm interested to know how I get the display you had above:

and how it will help me.

Many thanks!
David

2nd one is very good. Usually flower shots aren't my thing but I'll give you that 2nd shot.

There is a misunderstanding - the image is a screen shot of the GIMP in action after extracting a saturation map from your rose image.

'ShowImage' can also extract a saturation map from your rose but a screenshot would obviously be different, voila

Ignore the EXIF which is a FastStone problem ...

If you run the cursor inside the image, pixel stuff appears at left of the histogram. Deselecting the Stretch checkbox gets you 100% zoom.

It deepens your knowledge of your overall image quality, well beyond just how it looks on your screen or in a print.

Thank you!

David

You're welcome ...

Try the RGB to see how much green or blue there is in the petals ...

[edit] try CMYK magenta on your rose ... quite remarkable![/edit]

If hunting for texture in the petals one can blend an enhanced through levels unwanted C channel or K channel into red. With Photoshop, 'b' channel is also an option:
before

after

There are many variations for this technique, Margulis covers a lot of them in his books.

I'm far from an flower expert, mind you... but I enjoy shooting flowers. Considering the fact that your goal seems to be to get the whole flower in focus and still having it stand out, my personal recommendations might probably be mostly ineffective. But here's what I would try, as someone mostly shooting close-ups and macro images:

1.) get closer
2.) look for flowers with lots of empty space behind them
3.) look for strong color contrast
4.) don't try to get everything in focus, unless you find 2.) or 3.) to be the case
5.) try a tilt lens or adapter so you can manipulate the plane of focus

I select you! by simple.joy, on Flickr

They open as daisy fit by simple.joy, on Flickr

You're wonderful... put yourself out there! by simple.joy, on Flickr

Downpure by simple.joy, on Flickr

Rain: embrace with grace by simple.joy, on Flickr

Pinking up by simple.joy, on Flickr

Winter? Still open season for color. by simple.joy, on Flickr

Glowing pre-views by simple.joy, on Flickr

It‘s spring… time to get out of here! by simple.joy, on Flickr

Wide open. Wide open. by simple.joy, on Flickr

Way closer... to Spring by simple.joy, on Flickr

Apart from the last one every one of those are single shots, usually outside... That's not my strong point to be honest, so you can certainly do better.👍

The red channel rarely blows out before the green channel. RGB histograms typically involve a 50% increase in the red channel due to WB gain. As a practical matter you can get back one or even more than two stops during Raw conversion, so shoot Raw and work on PP.

Look for angles, and anticipate good light:

I almost always crop, and find 4:5 aspect ratio to be a good choice for flowers. Notice that I cropped out the lily pads, which I considered to be distracting; I believe this was a better approach than choosing 4:5 aspect ratio in my D800 and messing around with a post-processing decision while simultaneously trying to catch good light and not let my girlfriend wander too far away (we were in Hawaii and photography was mostly an annoyance to her).

I try to keep the conversion fairly tame and apply a curve to a layer in Photoshop. If I want more saturation I will apply a curve to a "Normal" layer, and if I just want to boost contrast without shifting the colors I will apply a curve to a "Luminosity" layer. Sometimes I will do both, usually a gentler curve to the Normal layer and a more aggressive one to the Luminosity layer.

Initially I hoped this was going to be an interesting thread, but instead it quickly degenerated into a discussion of post processing techniques.

The original post seemed to be looking for "tips" for doing something special with flower photography. That has been one of my main interests for years. My interest started with the realization that flowers are by nature beautiful but capturing something unique can indeed be difficult. I equate a lot of flower photography with an analogy of going to an art gallery and taking pictures of the art works. The results may be beautiful but the credit goes to the original artist, not the photographer. As a photographer I want to express my own vision of how I see the world and go beyond just a snapshot of a pretty flower.

This approach goes way beyond any techniques, even way beyond advanced techniques such as composition. Instead I am looking to express what I see as special. I have taken inspiration from O'Keeffe who excelled at showing us unique relationships, patterns and what I would call, rhythm. Her work is not about flowers. Those were merely the subject of her paintings.

I think of fine art photography as moving beyond snapshots and a Venn diagram can be used to express what I mean. One circle of the Venn diagram relates to our camera gear, settings and technical considerations. The next circle relates to composition; i.e., all the elements in the image and how they are organized and relate to one another. The third circle involves artistic goals, intent, and vision. When we have mastered all of these we can begin to express ourselves in unique and creative ways.

I wish I could easily show examples of what I mean. I do have a website which shows some of my earlier attempts. It is way out of date and only includes my earliest work but perhaps it will help to explain what I mean.

www.specialplacesphoto.com/

You're probably right that - partly because of an additional question by another member, and the lack of further engagement by the original poster - this topic moved a little bit away from the initial question.

However no one was or is stopping you from trying to get it back on track... on the contrary, I'm hereby asking you to please share your thoughts on the matter and some sample shots. I've looked at your website and I really like the flower images you show there. While I feel like it's exceptionally hard to present flowers in any kind of 'really new' way, I get the feeling that you've developed a lot of skill, both in terms of composition (which is the main subject here), as well as lighting and arrangement (which are almost always necessarily linked to the composition-aspect in the first place and similarly important). I would certainly love to see your new images and maybe hear something about your approach and ideas behind it! 👍

As I've stated earlier in the thread, I'm no flower photography expert, but I enjoy taking some shots of flowers, from very common ones to kinda experimental captures, from wildflowers outside to high-magnification macros in my tiny home-studio:

Soft spot for flowers by simple.joy, on Flickr

"* (in progress)" by simple.joy, on Flickr

Plant a thought in my head… by simple.joy, on Flickr

Driplets by simple.joy, on Flickr

Freedom to grow. Freedom to express yourself. by simple.joy, on Flickr

Unreal beauty by simple.joy, on Flickr

Center of attention by simple.joy, on Flickr

Red it where credit is due... by simple.joy, on Flickr

Silence of the lamps by simple.joy, on Flickr

... still the one true artist! by simple.joy, on Flickr

Down-de-line by simple.joy, on Flickr

I'm regularly impressed by the beautiful shapes, colors and unique details of flowers and even started a thread inviting everyone to show the variety of possible flower shots here:

dprevived.com/t/let-thousand-flowers-bloom-show-all-kinds-of-flower-shots/4802/

I feel like we have seen a lot of beautiful examples there to be inspired by - I certainly was by some of the wonderful contributions. So please also consider sharing some of your images there, if you feel like it. I'm sure it would be highly appreciated!

Your photos are always so magnificent!
We really need more photographers of your caliber here.
The question remains, how do we get them here?