Pixiq

If you read much about fashion photography, you will quickly learn about working the subject. "Work with me, baby." Click. "Very nice, now a little to the right." Click. "Can we get some more light on her hair?" Click. "Great look." Click. 

There are reasons for that. But you have noticed there are flowers at the beginning of this blog. That is because flowers are a good subject to work photographically as well. 

Flowers are one of those subjects that can be so beautiful that photographers forget they are thinking photographers and just start snapping pictures, expecting the beauty of the flower to automatically find its way into the photographs. That doesn't happen. A photo of a flower is not the same as the flower, and a gorgeous flower can make for a lousy photo.

This is, in reality, no different than photographing a beautiful model. The fashion photographer does not take the model's beauty for granted and strives to find photographs that will show off that beauty (or dress or whatever needs to be emphasized). He or she works the subject, looking for better shots, different shots that will use the media well, knowing that simply pointing the camera at a beautiful subject is not adequate. 

Spring is here in Southern California (and keep the faith, northerners -- it will be slowly heading north). These flowers are giant coreopsis and bloom along the coast. They are truly unusual plants, sometimes nicknamed Dr. Suess plants (more about them and these photos on my blog, www.natureandphotography.com) because of their odd look (think of the Lorax story).

I worked these flowers with different lenses, different angles, different distances and different light -- all in the same location at the same time one morning. The two "close ups" are actually shot with a 10-22mm lens. I really like shooting up close with a wide-angle -- this gives a feeling of setting and environment to the flowers while still showing them up close. It is like an environmental portrait. 

The other two shots, the low shot and the foggy shot, were taken with an 80-400mm lens. The low shot shows the shapes of these odd plants well and used the zoom to frame up this composition. The foggy shot used the full 400mm to compress distance and increase the feeling of the fog (shooting against the sun also helped).