Shooting Spring Flowers, Part II

Beyond the basics: Advanced tips for taking great flower photos.

Dave Johnson

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Feature: Shooting Spring Flowers, Part II

Nothing says it's springtime like flowers, and taking close-ups of wildflowers can be a very rejuvenating experience. It gets you outdoors, down in the dirt where you can inhale the natural perfume of the season. And you just might get some great photos in the process.

Last week I covered most of the basics: your camera's macro mode, lighting issues, and how to get a sharp shot. This week let's explore how depth of field plays a role in taking close-ups of flowers.

Don't Go Beyond Your Depth

Remember last week when we talked about using a tripod and the self-timer? Those techniques are great, but even a slight breeze can make your flower move, blurring the shot. Thankfully, there's a solution for this too.

I suggest that you use the highest shutter speed you've got available: If your digital camera has a shutter priority control, use it to dial in the highest value (probably somewhere between 1/500th and 1/1000th of a second). This increases the odds of getting a razor-sharp photo.

But increasing the shutter speed also opens up the aperture, which lets in more light to make up for the shorter shutter time. A larger aperture reduces your camera's depth of field--the front-to-back range in the picture that can be in sharp focus--and that is both good and bad.

On one hand, in close-up photography a shallow depth of field helps isolate and emphasize the subject while rendering the background blurry and indistinct. On the other hand, that short depth of field can make it difficult to keep the subject in sharp focus.

When your digital camera is set to macro mode, often the total depth of field is less than an inch. That's right--an inch! So you'll want to focus on the part of the picture that's most important. For instance, when I took a picture of a bougainvillea, I decided that the stamens projecting from the middle of the flower were the most critical element to keep crisp and help make the whole image appear to be focus.

Simulate Depth of Field on the PC

Another solution is to shoot the picture at a slower shutter speed and blur the background in an image editor like Jasc's Paint Shop Pro afterwards. If you're taking pictures of flowers on a completely still day, you might want to throttle back the shutter speed so focusing isn't quite so critical. Later, on the PC, you can selectively blur just the part of the picture you want.

Suppose we want to sharpen the flower itself slightly, but blur the background. Possible? Yes. Easy? You bet. Try it by saving my picture to your hard drive and then loading it into Paint Shop Pro 8.

First, grab the selection tool of your choice. I like to work with the Freehand Selection tool in Smart Edge mode. Find the Freehand tool in the fifth cubby from the top of the toolbar on the left. More than one tool lives there, so you may have to click the down arrow on the right side of the cubby and select it from the list. Once you've clicked Freehand Selection, look at the top left of your screen to find Selection Type. (Select View, Palettes, Tool Options from the menu if the Tool Options palette isn't open.) Click the down arrow on the right side of Selection Type and choose Smart Edge from the list.

Then start by clicking (and releasing) on a part of the edge of the flower, and stretching the rectangular lasso across a section of the edge. Click and stretch your way around the flower until you end up where you started. Double-click to complete the selection, and the flower should now be isolated from the rest of the image. This picture is easy to use Smart Edge on, since the purple part of the flower is so well defined.

Does the flower need a little sharpening? It might not hurt. Choose Adjust, Sharpness, Sharpen More to accentuate the flower's overall sharpness.

Now we want to contrast the flower with the background, which should be blurry and indistinct. First, we need to swap the selection so everything except the flower is selected. Choose Selections, Invert. Then, choose Adjust, Softness, Soften More. The background will soften a bit. If you want to really soften the background dramatically, try Adjust, Softness, Soft Focus and click OK to accept the default values. When you like your result, save the picture--you're done! I think mine turned out pretty well.

Dave's Favorites: Make Your Own SteadiCam

Ask almost any modern filmmaker what the most important innovation in the last 20 years has been, and the answer isn't likely to be digital video, surround sound, THX, or digital blue screening. Nope, most will cite the SteadiCam, a device that lets you get smooth-as-silk images from a handheld, moving camera. Without a SteadiCam, shooting video with a handheld digital camcorder leads to the telltale bumpiness and jerkiness that immediately identifies it as a home movie.

The only problem is that SteadiCams are expensive. My own SteadiCam JR set me back by about $600, and that's more money than almost any casual videographer is willing to invest to improve digital videos. That's why I was so excited to find Johnny Chung Lee's Web site.

This multitalented gentleman has designed his own version of the venerable SteadiCam--and it can be made in your own basement in an hour or two with less than $20 of materials. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that I haven't actually built my own "poor man's SteadiCam" from his design. But I've studied the simple instructions on his Web site and not only does it look easy to assemble, but I'd wager that there's a pretty good chance it'll work.

In reality, a SteadiCam is a pretty simple device--it's just a platform on which the camcorder and counterweight find equilibrium, allowing you to move around without shaking the camera. Johnny's design seems to do much the same thing as my much-more-expensive SteadiCam. Intrigued? Be sure to watch the short films he made showing off the device. If you make one of your own, please send me a note about the experience.

Q&A: How Do I Crop Pictures for Printing?

I am an amateur-beginner digital photographer, and one thing that currently perplexes me about digital photography is the width to height ratio. Recently I wanted to have some holiday photos printed, and was forced to manually crop them all to the 2:3 ratio that the photo lab uses. I'm sure you know how painful it is to crop to exact measurements manually. A friend of mine had photos printed without adjusting the ratio, and got ugly blank strips on two parallel sides. Is there any way to set the ratio in the digital camera before taking the shots? Or do you have any other helpful hints?

--Lana Stevic, South Africa

In the old days of digital photography--say, 2001--you would indeed have to manually set the crop for all of your pictures manually. I remember cropping pictures to 8 by 10 in those days, and it drove me to the very brink of insanity.

These days, Lana, all of the top image editing programs let you specify a ratio for your crop. When you resize the cropping box within your picture, it keeps the ratio ideally suited to whatever print spec you are interested--2:3, 5:7, 8:10, or wherever. I highly recommend upgrading to a program like Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8 or Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 for just this reason. When I looked them up at PC World's Product Finder, Paint Shop Pro 8 and Photoshop Elements 2 were selling for between $80 and $90.

Hot Pic of the Week

Get published, get famous! Each week, we select our favorite reader-submitted photo based on creativity, originality and technique. Every month, the best of the weekly winners gets a prize valued at between $15 and $50.

Here's how to enter: Send us your photograph in JPEG format, at a resolution no higher than 640 by 480 pixels. Entries at higher resolutions will be immediately disqualified. If necessary, use an image editing program to reduce the file size of your image before e-mailing it to us. Include the title of your photo along with a short description and how you photographed it. Don't forget to send your name, e-mail address, and postal address. Before entering, please read the full description of the contest rules and regulations.

This Week's Hot Pic: "Red Ford at Speed," by David Harris, Alexandria, Virginia

David says that he has been involved with digital photography since its earliest days nearly 15 years ago. A bit more recently, he shot this picture at an impromptu gathering of hotrods and snapped some pictures. He says: "I took a picture of this Ford pickup with my Canon 10D. I edited the image a bit with Photoshop, and the final result manages to capture the moment well."