How To Take Amazing Photos In Your Garden!
Break the Internet Garden Photography - Part I
Welcome to the first part of our Break-the-Internet Garden Photography series! Because we host seasonal Photography Contests at American Meadows (with great prizes), we thought it was high time that we chimed in about what makes a truly amazing photo. We want to help you make unforgettable, frame-worthy photos! The kind of photos that ‘break the internet’ by catching everyone’s attention on social media.
With that in mind, we plan to explore some great photographic techniques together. Our goal is to help you get truly memorable images of plants, people, and pollinators out of your gardens using both either your phone or digital SLR camera.
SLR = Single Lens Reflex. It’s the kind of camera that you can swap out separate lenses for.
Our 3 key elements of outstanding garden photography:
- Composition
- Focus
- Effort
Pat Leuchtman of Commonweeder.com snaps a photo at the 2016 Garden Bloggers Fling in Minneapolis.
Garden Photography Tip #1 - COMPOSITION
There is a difference between taking a photograph and making a photograph. Taking a photograph suggests that you were simply present enough to push a button - and on many occasions, that’s all you want or need to do.
Making a photograph means that YOU made a series of thoughtful decisions that led to the final image. When the final image is really something special, it feels great knowing that your decisions were responsible for a level of quality that your camera could never achieve without your brain’s input!
One of the first decisions you’ll make when attempting better garden photography is composition - essentially, framing your photos in the viewfinder before you take the shot. All modern cameras, be they phone, point and shoot, or digital SLR, allow you to overlay a grid right on top of the viewfinder. This grid helps to remind you about your framing options. It will be divided into nine sections so that you can make use of the most common technique for eye-pleasing compositions, called ‘The Rule of Thirds’.
Use The Rule of Thirds
Using the grid overlay in your camera's viewfinder, you can position the most dynamic portion of your subject so that it falls into just one third of your photo. Play with landing points of interest in either the top or bottom third, or in the extreme left third or right third.
Easy Practice: ⅓ vs. ⅔ rule. Using the grid, divide your photo into thirds either vertically or horizontally. Now, intentionally position the subject of your photo so that it takes up just one third of the image's space.
Intermediate Practice: Exploring Rule of Third Intersections This time, you'll want to make special note of the four intersections that your nine lines create when they cross. Any one of these junction points is a great place to position a spot in your photo that you want the viewer's eye to be drawn to. Color, action, sharp lines, sun spots, curious blurs - anything that you find interesting can be lined up with one of the four intersections to bring some extra attention to your shot.
The unraveling twists of Common mullein has been shifted to the right side of the photo and lined up with an intersection. This makes for a more dynamic photo than simply centering the subject.
Question: Is it okay to break the Rule of Thirds? Yes. You can even break it every single day. But if you’ve never used it before, you’ll notice how thoughtful it makes you as you compose your photos.
How to make grid lines visible on your phone:
- iPhone: go to Settings/Photos & Camera and make sure that the Grid switch is turned on.
- Android: turn the grid on and off using the tool menu, found in the lower left of the camera screen.
Garden Photography tip #2 - FOCUS
When making photos, you should always choose what you want in focus. A common mistake is to allow the camera to select a wide grid across the middle of the photo, making everything that lands there share the point of focus. You can do better!
This photographer was faced with the choice of focusing on the marigold in the forefront or the tomato in the background. If she had let the camera make her focusing choice, it's possible that neither would be sharp!
Sharp focus can be easily accomplished when using your phone, by touching your finger to the screen directly over the area that you'd like to focus on. Remember that most phones need to be 2-3 inches away from their subjects to focus in.
Focusing Trick: all cameras and lenses have focusing limitations, and it's important to make note of yours.
Garden Photography tip #3 - EFFORT COUNTS
The best advice any photographer has ever received is to take a lot of photos! You can bet those shining examples that we see in magazines and posted throughout the blogosphere were not one-shot-wonders. With the days of shooting on film slowly creeping into the history books, we no longer need to be selective about how often we push the shutter button. So shoot away - it's really like buying multiple photographic lottery tickets.
- Move around - a lot. You should be changing position often.
- Always try to get each shot both vertically and horizontally, if possible.
- Step back for a wider shot and lean in for a close-up.
- Shoot from above, shoot from below.
Most importantly, don’t ever feel badly that you shot over 100 photos or spent over an hour on the same shot and didn’t get something good. Not being afraid to fail means that you’ll be gaining experience and know-how, even when your final images come up short. (Ahem - this same attitude will take you far in the garden. Who cares what the neighbor’s think - plant away!)
Tip for Your Sanity: Try looking at your photos in reverse order. Most often, the best shots you've taken will be at the end of your session, after you've really figured out just what it is that's so interesting about your subject!
Extra Credit: WHAT YOU MEASURE IMPROVES!
Instagram is a really fun way to track your progress; consider using it as a Photo Diary. Not only will this help you remember what you planted where from year to year, but it will also allow you to see how much your skill set has changed over the course of time. Also, posting to Instagram will increase your chances of 'breaking the internet'!
You can see what we're up to on Instagram here. Tag @AmericanMeadows or #americanmeadows so we can see your photos!