You don’t have to travel far to find scenic beauty. Perhaps the flora and fauna are right outside your door. If you live in the city, go to a park or botanical garden. Long and super-long telephoto zoom lenses come in handy for photographing wildlife creatures that you can’t get close to. And don’t forget to seek out the tiny things. If you have a dedicated macro lens, you can experience the everyday miracles that go undetected by the naked eye.
Nature’s design is nothing short of a miracle, within which you will find all of these elements. When you discover them in a way that tugs at your heart, it’s definitely subject matter worthy of a shoot.
Venture outside after a rainstorm, particularly in the early morning sun. The atmosphere is bright but not overly so, and the raindrops on flora glisten like diamonds. Search for interesting reflections in the drops that cling to petals and leaves. There is pleasure in capturing a droplet just seconds before it falls to the earth.
Extremely simple compositions that artfully use negative space to frame and accentuate a significant object can be powerful, dramatic and compelling.
Photograph the part of the world that is normally underfoot. There is much to explore and see from this vantage point. If you have a macro lens, it’s as if you shrunk yourself down amongst the flora and fauna. The fine details you can capture this way are astonishing.
It’s preferable to use a macro lens to get inside a flower, but here’s my trick for using your DSLR camera’s standard lens to do so! Get as close to the subject as focusing will allow, and shoot. Bring the photo into Photoshop or Pixlr (a free program available at Pixlr.com) and crop in closer—voilà—almost like a macro lens shot! And if your DSLR has a lot of megapixels, you can crop heavily and still have what’s considered to be a high-resolution image.
No need to wait for the rain. An old, easy trick is to spray water droplets on your flowers with a spray bottle. They look dazzling in the sun and pick up reflections in the environment. Instead of looking down on the blooms like we normally do, change it up and get down on your belly.
You can freeze the motion of a raindrop or snowflake falling to the ground with a very fast shutter speed like 1⁄500 sec. or faster. Use a rainsleeve made especially for DSLRs, to protect your camera from the elements.
Bugs, bees, spiders and small creatures of the like photographed with a macro lens will open your eyes to tiny details that are not available to the naked eye. They can capture fine hairs on ant legs, dusty pollen on the fur of a bee, and allow you to count with ease the multiple glassy black eyes on a spider’s head.
Cheaper, somewhat less effective alternatives include using macro extension tubes that attach to your lens and allow you to focus more closely on your tiny subject or converting your telephoto zoom lens into a zooming macro lens by attaching a close-up lens, which looks like a filter and acts like a pair of magnification reading glasses.
Several manufacturers make macro lenses specifically for mobile devices.
The golden hours of morning and eve, as well as overcast days, give the best light for taking photos because it is even and soft. If you are shooting flora in bright afternoon light, place a diffuser disc above the scene to soften the light. Golden hour backlighting illuminating your flower petals makes for glowing, ethereal, dreamy shots.
Which lens for photographing birds and animals in the wild? Use a 300mm+ telephoto zoom lens for zooming in really close to your subjects. If you can’t afford one (I’m lusting after an 800mm lens that costs more than my current car), consider renting a lens or purchasing a teleconverter that you can attach to your telephoto zoom lens to lengthen it.
You can find telephoto zoom lenses specifically for mobile devices.
If you want to blur the background, go with Portrait Scene mode or the Close-Up/Macro Scene mode. For more detail in the background, choose the Landscape Scene mode.
If you want to capture a clear flower with a soft, blurry background, dial in a wider aperture in either Aperture Priority mode or Manual mode. If you want to take a photograph of a butterfly drinking nectar, use a small aperture like f/22 for clarity throughout.
If using your macro lens with small apertures, a tripod is a must, as the shutter speed will slow. With macro lenses, as with telephoto zoom lenses, any bit of camera shake is noticeable, so support is essential for making sharp photos.
A shutter release cable is helpful, so you don’t have to jostle your camera by pressing the on-camera shutter release. The built-in self-timer may also be an option.
Specifics: In Aperture Priority or Manual mode, dial in your desired aperture. If you want clarity from front to back, dial in anywhere from f/16 to f/22. Set the ISO as low as possible and go with the slower shutter speed required for proper exposure, with your camera mounted on a tripod. If it is windy, or you don’t have your tripod, choose a wider aperture and higher ISO, both of which will yield a faster shutter speed that prevents blur from either camera shake or subject blur.
You can use Photoshop’s Clone Stamp tool and/or Spot Healing Brush tool to get rid of them.
If you don’t have a dedicated macro lens for taking close-up shots, use your DSLR’s Close-Up/Macro Scene mode. It works especially well with a zoom lens. Keep in mind you won’t be able to get as close as you would with a macro lens.
I spotted these cherry trees in the city of Portland, Maine. The soft pink petals were in stark contrast to the tangle of branches they grew off of, making for a stunning shot that to me symbolized the transition from a harsh Maine winter into a softer spring. I altered this photo with several actions from MCP Actions’ Spring Splendor set. 15–85mm f/3.5–5.6 lens at 70mm, ISO 100, f/11 for 1⁄160 sec.
When shooting with a dedicated macro lens, the same DOF rules apply, just on a smaller scale. An aperture setting of f/5 gave me a clear foreground and soft, blurry background in this macro shot. The back of the honeybee recedes into the blur, which I like. If I wanted the entire bee to be clear, I would have chosen a smaller aperture. 100mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/5.0 for 1⁄1000 sec.
It was the morning of the season’s first snow when the deer came out of the woods to eat the remains of our flower and vegetable gardens. I quickly attached my 300mm telephoto zoom lens and was privileged enough to capture a close-up photograph of one of the younger, less cautious does. I kept my shutter speed fast, ready to capture a running or leaping deer. 75–300mm f/4–5.6 lens at 90mm, ISO 200, f/4 for 1⁄800 sec.