Four simple skills of using light in flower photography

Lead: Flowers and plants must be one of the favorites of many photographers. When you travel to the suburbs, parks or holidays near your home, you can't help pointing your camera at them, let alone catching up with the flower season! How can I make flowers and plants beautiful Let's listen to experts teach us how to use light. After learning, maybe even weeds can make a delicate feeling.

Simple 4 tricks of flower photography: use light skills to shoot flowers with diffuse light.

Diffuse light is a very soft light, and the object has no projection or the projection is not obvious under the illumination of this light, which is similar to the shadowless lamp used in the operating room. The condition that this kind of light is generated outdoors is that white clouds cover the sun and there is no obvious direct light shining on the subject. After many reflections, the light has lost its obvious directionality. Unlike cloudy light, diffuse light is much brighter, but it is also very soft. Using diffuse light to shoot flowers, the picture has no obvious relationship between light and shade, which reduces the contrast and can show the texture and hierarchy of flowers. At the same time, this kind of light is very suitable for macro photography to avoid the interference of messy light on the lens. If we shoot flowers indoors, we can also artificially create diffuse light, and build an arc around the flowers with white objects, such as white paper or white cloth, to form a soft diffuse light, which is much better than indoor light.

▲ Aperture F5.6, shutter 1/80s, focal length 300mm, ISO 100.

Scattered light is beneficial to express the texture of flowers, and there is no obvious relationship between light and shade, which is beneficial to enhance the saturation of flower colors.

Describe flowers with sidelight

When the light shines on the subject, it produces a projection with obvious directionality on the other side, which can show the texture, three-dimensional sense and depth of the subject and has a good modeling effect. The ability of sidelight modeling is strong, which can make the subject have obvious bright and dark sides, increase the tone of the picture and enrich the picture level. This large light ratio and Gao Fancha give people a strong visual impact, thus producing a strong artistic modeling effect. Therefore, the tone level of sidelight photography is much richer than that of frontal light. When using sidelight to shoot flowers, some of them will be exposed to direct sunlight, and the other part will be exposed to scattered light and reflected light from the sky or surrounding scenery. The flowers under the side light are very expressive. When the side light is strong, the contrast between light and shade produced by the photographed object is also strong.

▲ Aperture F 1, shutter 1/250s, focal length 100mm, ISO 100.

Strong side light makes the flowers have obvious light and shade relationship, creates a dark background, and makes the flowers more prominent.

The effect of displaying mosaic texture by backlight.

Backlight shooting can improve the brightness and saturation of objects, and make dull and tasteless objects show beautiful luster and good texture under the light. In flower photography, the backlight is composed of Gao Fancha's light and shade, forming a refreshing artistic shape. Backlight can outline the beautiful lines of flowers, and it can also make the main body of flowers far away from the dark background, increase the depth of the picture and highlight the main body. On the dark background, the texture of flowers and leaves is well presented. Pay attention to the problem of exposure compensation when using backlight to shoot flowers, and increase the exposure appropriately according to the actual situation, otherwise the picture will be underexposed and lose the effect of backlight.

▲ Aperture F9, shutter 1/320s, focal length 90mm, ISO 100.

Under the backlight, the leaves are transparent, which increases the color saturation and makes the picture fresh and bright.

Use exposure compensation to display the color of flowers.

When shooting flowers, if the flowers occupy the whole picture, the exposure value measured by the camera is basically accurate for the color reproduction of flowers. If the flowers only occupy a small part of the picture, it will not be so "brilliant" for the in-machine metering system, and the brightness of the background and its surrounding scenery will have a great impact on the exposure of the camera. When shooting flowers with a dark background, the metering point of the camera should focus on the flowers. If the background is exposed in dark color, it will deceive the camera's metering system and lead to the transition of flower exposure. Similarly, a light background will also lead to underexposure of flowers, which will affect the recovery of their own colors. Experienced photographers, according to the actual situation, will make appropriate compensation for the exposure value measured by the camera, try to avoid the excessive influence of the environment on flowers, and strive to truly restore the color of flowers. The specific method is to increase the exposure on bright background and reduce the exposure on dark background.

▲ Aperture F8, shutter 1/30s, focal length 105mm, ISO 100.

This is an elegant picture of flowers, with 1/2 added on the basis of camera metering. File, the effect will be better.