Pixiq

The past few weeks have been a bit of a photographic indulgence with some outdoor ‘therapy’ after time spent in front of computer screens working on chunks of text and getting up to date with filing. What better to do than generate a few thousand more images to fill hard drives and demand yet more of hours keywording...?

Luckily, I can get up to some seriously high ground in just a few hours to where the snows have just melted. There is a frantic growth period as plants burst into bloom and a myriad insects take to the wing in the  few short months they have to complete their life cycles in a harsh environment.

The first time I saw really high mountains was on a trip as a university student from London to Yugoslavia as it was then…38 hours by train, sleeping on seats or in corridors. The montane majesty of Austria so gripped me I stood looking through the window for hours on end and, since then, I have no idea of the thousands of hours since spent tramping mountains in search of rare wild flowers – lugging camera bags that are far too heavy.

The truth is that it was a love of wildflowers, wild orchids in particular, that first got me into serious photography and from there it was logical to branch out to photograph places the flowers grew and the things that flew around them, wandered over them and even ate them … It was attempts to probe inner workings of flowers that led to the passion for ‘macro’ and many years spent developing techniques for the work I do.

Being in high places, up there with the gods, can make you reflective about the why’s and how’s of things – especially, in my case, when I need to write about them. So, in a short series of posts I thought it worth describing a few techniques that people might like to try and use to lift flower images from the mundane. A lot of nature photographers think of flowers as the poor relatives because other subjects “do” things…flowers just sort of sit there. Which, of course challenges any photographer, that much more, to get images with impact.

I was delighted to be asked to write the entry on flower photography in the Focal Encyclopaedia of Photography not least because it made me wonder where I stood on the subject but also where I could take my work in ways that pleased me…and I got a free copy of the book!

Photography or Painting?

I have often thought that if I could draw the way I would like to then I might well not have taken up photography. It is probably background – coming from a scientific discipline that makes me prefer  realism and botanical accuracy though, when the occasion demands, I will depict flowers in more abstract ways, though I know others do that better with a greater sense of the ‘art’ involved…but I look and learn!

I like the starkness of old-fashioned botanical illustration and their realism but, if you know your plants and look closely, you see that the artist has often had to exaggerate some feature to bring out diagnostic details: this is also interpretive work.

At one stage, when I did a lot of work in conjunction with Kew Gardens and herbarium botanists, it puzzled me that they were happier with dried plants on herbarium sheets... a kind of 'botanical necrophilia'. In fact, many of them were not photographers and their photographic images were not any form of realistic replacement. Over the years I have emphasised in classes and courses how plant photographs need never be excused as mere records: if you are going to make the shot then do it well. Respect the plant!

Distortion of perspective

I don’t know if the way I work now will be the way I work in a few years time because I need change and challenge. I work mostly with a. a telephoto macro lens (about which I have written in detail) to isolate blooms against soft blurred backgrounds and b. a series of ultra-wides (especially a 15mm diagonal fisheye) to give that ‘sense of place’.

I feel that I can capture the spirit of the plant and its place in the scheme of things that much better using the slight perspective distortion that wide-angles used up close convey. Before I go further, let me say I dislike calling this ‘wide-angle macro’ because it is not – it is close-up work, never getting to life-size (where, for me in traditional fashion, macro work begins) to do that means the lens almost touches the flower and is almost impossible to do.

When we first notice a plant we are inevitably drawn to the flowers, the beacons that attract insects and other potential pollinators. It is only after that that our vision expands to take in the whole thing. This is why I have long held that wide-angle lenses duplicate the first impression we have of plants by virtue of the perspective distortion they convey when we move in close to a subject. It is a distortion that has to be used with care with animal subjects since it foreshortens features – “big nose syndrome” – in an unflattering way.

Lighting

It seems obvious to say this is the most important element of photography but I see an awful lot of plant photographs let down by a lighting that conveys flatness…an excess of contrast is equally unappealing but it is such a shame to let flowers become drab and boring. Sorry, but it just ain’t the way I see them and although it can be a risk, I like to use light – especially back light - for those contre-jour shots to make colors sing out. I want to try and convey some of the delight I get in seeing superb flowers in stunning places.

It's a  simple goal but not always easy to achieve so in Part 2 of this post I’ll look into this further with those ''contre-jour' shots and the way in which the ND filter in the Lightroom 3 development module has become my ‘best friend’ (and can work for you) magically pulling back detail into those white skies that seem to be there when you do not want them. It is a thing of genius – my grateful thanks to the designers who incorporated that.

Part 3 will look at extreme back lighting, working with illuminated white panels like my colleagues Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt on the shared blog Images from the Edge, use for their great project Meet Your Neighbours (MYN)…the ideas are theirs, I am just an acolyte…well, not quite for I have started pushing the boundaries a bit and doing image stacking with white backgrounds ! Maybe that can be my contribution.