Category: Photography

It is much easier to get a lovely picture of an individual flower or even a small cluster of blooms than to take a good shot of the whole plant in a garden setting. If you see a shapely plant covered in fresh, open blooms, please give it a try, even if you tend to have more success with individual flower shots.

Great shrub or climber shots of roses in full flower in an attractive context are surprisingly rare. They simply don’t exist for many varieties.

I’m not confident about taking this kind of shot myself, but when the picture before you is so lovely, you have to have a go! This picture shows shrub and climbing roses near the peak of flower in a wide border around David Austin’s Plant Centre in Albrighton, England.

Blustery conditions present real problems for garden photography. It’s another roses are like dogs comparison, but even in a moderate summer breeze, some varieties of English roses will bounce around on the ends of their branches like enthusiastic young puppies hoping to be taken for a walk. If you’re hoping to take a few macro shots, it’s going to be hard enough keeping the bloom in shot, never mind in focus! Continue reading “Tips for photographing roses 11: keep an eye on the forecast”

I have watched (with real concern) as professional photographers struggled to reproduce colours accurately when taking pictures of cut flowers under studio lighting.  They’ve carefully calibrated their cameras, lighting, reflectors and computer screens. They’ve taken shots of test colour cards and used comparison software to prove that the colours will be reproduced accurately then, immediately afterwards, have taken a shot of a crimson rose that was well out by eye compared to the living flower.

When that happens, I suppose there’s not much you can do except blame the rose. I’m only teasing, though I can share a ‘strange but true’ observation:  Continue reading “Tips for photographing roses 10: getting colours right”