26.01.09

Get close to nature for stunning shots

Things have settled down and life in our gardens, hedgerows, parks, woodlands, meadows and waterways, to name a few, will be teeming with life, from mini beasts to fantastic flowers.

The hardest part of shooting this tiny world is knowing where to find good stuff to take pictures of. Our guide won’t make you an instant expert biologist or entomologist, but you don’t need to be. With just some basic knowledge and a few ideas, you can open the doors onto a whole new world of small wonders and some tantalising picture prospects. And the next 15 pages will help you make the best of these opportunities, with advice on composition and focal length, plus some of the pros’ secrets. And, contrary to what you may think, you don’t need bundles of gear either.

A macro lens around the 100mm mark and a decent form of support will get you by in most situations. But great images can be achieved with just your standard and telezooms too. However, it has to be said, a few extra bits of kit will really help you make the most of the opportunities.

It doesn’t matter if you have a three-bed semi in Reading or a three-acre mansion in Bristol, your garden has loads of stuff to shoot: common garden insects, spiders, ladybirds, butterflies; cultivated flowers like sweet peas and roses; wild flowers such as poppies and daisies; abstract bark, moss and leaf patterns. The obvious advantage, and the element that makes shooting in your garden so attractive, is that it’s close, accessible and all your kit is to hand. Plus you know your own garden so well that you could probably make a list of stuff to photograph as long as your arm with very little exploration – and you can wait in comfort for more attractive lighting conditions.

But best of all, cock it all up and you can easily go back. A macro lens of around the 100mm mark, plus a telezoom, something like a 75-300mm, will be enough here, anything longer and you may have trouble with close-focusing distances, depending on the size of your garden. If you’ve yet to buy a macro lens, check out our comparison test of 10 models on page 122 and find out which we consider to be the top performer. A reflector and a sturdy camera support, such as a tripod or beanbag, if you have them, will also come in handy. Select aperture-priority mode and let the camera sort metering out.

The best light, and calmer conditions, will be at the beginning and end of the day, but shadows could present exposure and colour cast challenges. Shooting in shadows means longer exposures at low ISO speeds and camera support, especially for longer lenses, becomes essential. Your coat or mini pod will do the job as well as any tripod if it won't get low to the ground, but you will need to use your camera’s timer or a remote release to avoid shake. In shadows, your camera will record ambient light with a blue cast, so make sure you adjust your white-balance setting to Cloudy (or leave it on Auto), otherwise your colours won’t record accurately. Of course, if you’re shooting Raw you can easily adjust colour casts at the processing stage.

FLOWERS, COLOURS AND ABSTRACTS

Flowers, wild or cultivated, are good starting subjects. Look for colours, shapes and patterns. Get in close to the stamen or stigma, but don’t just plonk things in the centre of the frame, use the rule of thirds to help you compose your images.Some DSLRs can even help with this as they can display a grid in the viewfinder. Also look for the contrasting colours of stems against petals, using the lines to cross the frame at an interesting angle. If you need a little extra light, or want to be more creative, a reflector, homemade or shop bought, will bounce light into darker places, creating subtle and attractive lighting.

This is particularly useful if you’re shooting flowers from underneath. For a portrait, get your camera level with the subject and open your aperture wide – you don’t have to use a macro for this, your telezoom at the long end will work as well. You can also employ a mirror, placing it beneath your subject and shooting the reflection for a different angle. Obviously, you’ll need to make sure the mirror is clean and be careful not to accidentally include your own reflection. Failing that, place your camera on the floor, even upside-down, and shoot away – just watch your meter doesn’t expose for the brighter sky, underexposing your subject.

On your garden photo exploration, look for abstract grass or leaf patterns. Use stronger, more directional light to create attractive shadows, golden rimlights or silhouettes, but you’ll need to get down and get the camera behind or at 90° to the light source and take care to avoid placing the subject diagonally across the frame.

FLARE

This kind of directional light is perfect for enhancing texture and shapes. Your pattern meter will cope well, but it might be a good idea to add one- to twothirds of a stop extra exposure compensation to lighten shadows and darken highlights.

Explore for bugs wandering around your garden, you will find all manner of critters trying to warm themselves in the sun, feeding or mating, while all the time avoiding predators. Don’t just start snapping away though, because a bit of time spent observing them will pay photographic dividends. As a starting point, a simple portrait is fine, but try and capture some sort of behaviour, eating, drinking or mating.

Also, look for more interesting angles, colours and contrasts. Butterflies, for example, always photograph best in profile at their eye-level, not from top-down with wings open. This is great for focusing and depthof-field too, as they are much easier to control with the subject in profile. Take care with your backgrounds; an aperture of around f/5.6-11 should be enough to blur most. Try to capture your critter in a more natural surrounding – brick walls are just plain awful. You might even need to go as far as cleaning the area around your subject; try using a small, soft paintbrush for this. It’ll save you hours of cloning in Elements too.

Make a set With practice and patience, a few insect ‘sets’ may also help you to control things a little more. Try a piece of bark, a large leaf or a large flat stone – each of these will provide a cleaner yet natural-looking background to place a carefully caught insect on. Take great care moving your ‘models’; that small, soft paintbrush is useful for this too. Be sure to put the wee beasties back when you’re finished.

Placing your background and model on a table will raise your subjects higher and save your back. You could also use the table to prop up coloured card, which creates the perfect, contrasting background for flowers and leaves. Card can be used as a reflector too – of course, another image can be used as a background, just watch out for shiny reflections. If you find you need an extra pair of hands to manage all these elements, either enlist your partner or get yourself a Plamp – a long, flexible arm, with a crocodile clamp at one end, that attaches to your tripod leg.
 

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