The last BLOG I wrote about was getting things right in camera. We talked about the histogram and making sure we are paying attention to the light meter before the shot. Let’s look at the frame; what’s in your frame before you take the shot? Are you filling the frame with your subject? Are there distractions in the background or foreground of your subject? I use to say to myself before I took the shot - “I can photoshop this out or that or I can crop that out of the frame.” Over time I have learned that is a lot of work on the backside of my images, so why not just get it right at the beginning?
When you crop an image, you loose information, however cropping is sometimes needed. Keep in mind if you are cropping and are not keeping the ratio’s within your sensor size or print size you will end up with odd print sizes or odd sizes to post to social media. An example - Instagram is a square format, so when cropping for Instagram you will need to keep it as a 1:1 ratio for best results. All this may seem confusing at first, but I have seen so many examples of bad crops or bad framing. I discussed in an earlier post about composition in Tip #3 in my BLOG post, cropping and composition go hand in hand. See others tips here: https://www.mandywilliamsphotography.com/blog/bloomsoffloralphotography If you are a beginner or even an immediate photographer, your editing program (I use Lightroom and Photoshop) should have an overlay that is divided into thirds as well as a lot of cameras. I do find this distracting at first but it will help train your eye for the frame. This is a feature you can turn on and off - see your camera manual for more information or just Google like we do for most questions these days. One of the first things you will learn, especially in landscape and macro is to divide the image into thirds. Let’s look at a few examples below.
The first example of the zinnia divides the subject with negative space on the left side of the image. The main focus is on the petals closest to the lens and an intersection of thirds at the top and bottom of the zinnia. I want you to visually imagine this so you will train your eye to see the thirds when you are getting ready to set your frame for the shot. Basically you will need to see a tick-tac board over your image. By taking these extra steps and remember again, this is not a foot race to the finish line - this is a slow thoughtful process. You will come away with shots that out straight out of camera ready - no cropping is needed.
The beautiful sunflower bloom was just beginning to open up. I shot this in a field that my son planted in 2021 on the farm. As you can see this is a centered focus and filling the frame with the sunflower bloom while leaving negative space around the subject. When you divide this image into thirds, you have the yellow petals as the center, the intersection of the stem on the right and negative space on the left. Your eye is immediately drawn to the direction of the light on the bloom and then wanders throughout the image.
Now to really get picky with this image, it would have been a stronger image if there was a little more room at the top of the image of the background and I would also like to point out the tips of the bloom are almost blown out with highlights. (I will address this in a different BLOG post about light colored flowers and light.) Also something I have not mentioned before, flowers have stems and if you include the stem in your image, the viewer should be able to see the stem. The stem should also be placed in the frame just above the corners of the image. I have often rotated my image to change the direction of the stem in the frame - just food for thought.
Do you want to learn more about Blooms of Floral Photography? I am hosting a series of workshops for the beginner, intermediate and advanced photographer this summer. For more information, click on the link. In the subject line “Blooms”. Class size will be limited to 6 students for beginners.