Floral Photography

 

I mentioned last week that I had a goal to beat out a particular one of my fellow camera club members, and I did it this year in the Color/Weather category at the Lake County Fair. His specialty is flowers, so the next logical goal would be to beat him in that category. But I’m not even going to try. Yes, I’ll continue submitting flower photos at the fair, but not with a goal of besting him.

Michael’s flowers are gorgeous, and I love looking at them. There are several reasons why mine will never look that way, however.

First, Michael’s floral photographs are mostly close-ups with black backgrounds, and they look as if they were taken in a studio even when they weren’t.

Second, Michael spends thousands on equipment and hours in post-processing. Although I enjoy photography that’s not where I want to spend my time and money.

Third, Michael also spends more time than I do tracking down the perfect flower at the best time of day and finding just the right angle to shoot from.

While that kind of search might be fun, I’m a working writer and can’t always take time off when conditions are best. Many of my flowers are taken in full sun simply because that’s when I see them. While there are some adjustments I can make to compensate for that, there are other problems that I can’t fix, such as when the sun washes out the details.

That’s what happened in the photo at the top of the page. Not only was the detail washed out, but the flower itself looked a little artificial in the harsh light. Even so, I liked it well enough that I decided to enter it in the Color/Floral category at the fair. So I tried to give it a little more interest using post-processing to soften the image. Roland thinks it looks a bit like a painting. It didn’t win a ribbon, but I like it.

The next photo is the one I entered in B&W/Floral. It didn’t win a ribbon, either, although I had higher hopes for it than for the color one I entered. Unlike the color photo, this was taken on a darker day and you can see more details, such as the rain drops. Several months ago, I entered it in competition at my photo club as a color photograph, and the score there was sort of middle-of-the-road. During the critiquing afterwards, one judge told me it would have scored higher if I had cloned out the stalk behind it.

I could have done that. I have the software and the knowledge and often clone out imperfections and distractions, but her suggestion would have changed the context and the impact of the photo. Besides, the stalk is almost as interesting as the flower, although that might be part of the problem if it draws attention away from the main subject of the photo. Still, I like the way it looks in black and white, so I went ahead and entered it at the fair without changing the background.

As you can see, I like my flowers in a natural setting, such as against a brick wall or with a stalk in the background. That’s part of the reason they don’t do well at the fair.

But I’ll keep on entering them.