Five elements of shooting cherry blossoms

"The petals of cherry blossoms fall on shredded pork and vegetable soup under the tree." Sakura Appreciation by Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō shows readers an elegant and carefree picture of cherry blossoms in a very vivid way-the spring breeze blows over colorful cherry blossoms, and people are laughing and laughing under the tree, holding delicious food in their hands. How can such a beautiful scenery not be fascinating? I believe that you and I will have an impulse to shoot the shutter hot. But when recording these beautiful scenery, do you know what you need to know to shoot cherry blossoms? Before the arrival of the season when birds fly and flowers bloom, we will exclusively summarize the five elements that you must know when shooting cherry blossoms.

If you want to do well, sharpen your tools in advance.

Although I have never been a fan of photographic equipment, I can still tell you responsibly that if you are ready to shoot equipment with a specific theme, you will get half the battle. There are three key words to choose the equipment for shooting cherry blossoms: large aperture, telephoto and macro. There is a Japanese proverb: "Cherry blossoms bloom for seven days", that is, it takes about seven days for a cherry blossom to bloom and wither. It is precisely because of the short flowering period that when cherry blossoms are in full bloom, tourists will get together to enjoy the flowers, and it is inevitable that there will be very noisy scenes. If you don't want to shoot the "grand occasion" of more people and less flowers, you must think about how to streamline the background. A large aperture can achieve a very good background blur effect, so that there will be no messy background to steal the eye when shooting cherry blossoms.

Using telephoto lens can not only blur the background, but also effectively cut the background and put the unnecessary messy background outside the frame. Macro lens is born for shooting close-ups, which can not only avoid the influence of the environment on the subject to the greatest extent, but also fully interpret the beauty and elegance of a small cluster of cherry blossoms. For the realization of these three keywords, 1: 1 macro lens and 70-200F2.8 and 100mm medium-long focus fixed lens are good choices. If you can use an artifact like 200F2.0, it will be even more powerful.

In addition, most tourists who enjoy flowers will go together, and it is inevitable to take photos with cherry blossoms, so we have to choose some wide-angle and medium-focus lenses. When taking group photos, lenses with focal lengths of 24mm, 35mm and 50mm are essential. Because the background blur effect is not needed to shoot this kind of "a tour here", the aperture size has little effect. It would be great to have a high-quality zoom lens such as 24-70F2.8, but even if it doesn't, the headgear of a general camera is completely competent.

It is also easy for people who use interchangeable lens digital cameras to choose equipment. Generally, the macro function of small cameras is very good, and cameras with large zoom ratio are also very popular, which can basically cope with cherry blossom shooting. It is a perfect scheme to choose some DC of large aperture lens. Large aperture DC such as Canon S95 and Panasonic LX5 can give consideration to the above conditions. If you want to travel to Japan in this flowering period and enjoy flowers at the foot of Mount Fuji, choosing to carry such a small camera can highlight the advantages of portability.

Choosing scenery is the key to success.

Unless you are a photojournalist shooting a live report of the Cherry Blossom Festival, the most important thing when shooting cherry blossom scenes is not to let a large number of tourists become the characters in your photos. Although it may be difficult to do it at the scene, you must try to choose a place with a relatively clean and concise background, so that the audience will pay full attention to the cherry blossoms you photographed. If people really can't escape, backhand is a good way to compensate.

Many photographers choose the most beautiful scenes when shooting. But you know, this kind of place is often a sight that is completely surrounded by cherry blossoms. If you shoot at this time, it is difficult to show what you saw at that time, because "I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, but toward which corner of the mountain". So we Shang Huashi people should be in the sea of flowers, but we should try to stay away from the sea of flowers when shooting big scenes.

Of course, when shooting cherry blossoms, you can't always shoot cherry blossoms "stupidly". Sometimes it is necessary to find some background that can reflect the environment at that time, explain the background of the venue or increase the charm of the photo. For example, the corner of the antique cornice behind the cherry blossoms, or the hazy beauty figure behind the cherry blossoms, can be the finishing touch of a photo.

A good photographer must be good at using light.

Sunlight shooting is the most commonly used way to use light in photography, and shooting cherry blossoms is no exception. Sunlight shooting can faithfully record the elegant characteristics of cherry blossoms, and can also better show the "blue" of the blue sky when the sky is used as the background. But if all the photos are taken along the light, it is inevitable that you will be tired when you see too many photos of the same type. So for this opportunity to shoot as much as possible, we have to try more.

Cherry blossoms are dense, and the flower shape characteristics are not obvious, which is not suitable for backlighting. But the petals of cherry blossoms are very thin and have good light transmission. If you shoot a big scene against the light, you can strengthen the sense of hierarchy and space between the cherry blossoms and the background.

Cherry blossoms are lighter in color. If the sky is taken as the background, a little exposure compensation can be appropriately added, so that the original color and transparency of cherry blossoms can be photographed. If the background is a dark gray wall or a dark scene, you should pay attention to reducing the exposure compensation, otherwise the cherry blossoms will shine because of overexposure.

The artistic conception of the picture should be expressed by composition.

Cherry blossoms usually have large flower clusters and dense flowers, so using some big scenes is a composition method that many photographers will choose. However, the composition should not be too "full". If cherry blossoms are everywhere, it will inevitably make the picture lose focus and tend to be dull. In the big scene full of cherry blossoms, there must be a finishing touch or a proper blank space. In this way, the combination of primary and secondary compositions is more likely to highlight the lush cherry blossoms because of the contrast effect.

When using a macro lens, try to find some cherry blossoms with smaller flower clusters. Many cherry trees are decades old, and new leaves and buds will grow on the thick trunk. This kind of flower cluster is usually small, which is very suitable for macro photography. At the same time, after the flower cluster is combined with the trunk or branch, the texture of the trunk and the shape of the branch can highlight the cherry blossom cluster well, so as to achieve the combination of point and surface.

If you choose a cherry tree near an ancient building, you can choose a cherry tree and combine it with the outline of the background building for composition. How to compose a composition depends on the specific situation of the flower branches and the outline of the building, and the photographer strives to shoot a quaint atmosphere.