Nature Photography How To

Beautiful flowers are just about everywhere you look this time of year, at a nearby part, the local arboretum, or even in your own backyard. In this video from the popular WT FSTOP YouTube channel you'll learn several straightforward techniques for capturing flowers that seem alive.

Today's instructor named Angie is a long-time shooter specializing in wildlife and other forms of outdoor photography who says this: "Flowers are one of my favorite subjects because they don't run away like a cheetah." You may think floral photography is easy but there are a few things to master—whether you're shooting macro images or moving back for a wider view.

The tips you'll learn today are appropriate for beginners as well as for more experienced photographers who want to brush up on there skills with this particular genre. Angie begins by discussing locations, and today's destination is a spot called the Poppy House near San Antonia, TX that's resplendent with fields of red subjects.

You'll follow Angie as she manipulates depth of field for closeups and more expansive landscape views, while revealing the specific settings she employs for both. Along the way you'll pick up solid advice on composition, camera position, and the various camera angles that work best. There's also a discussion of the camera gear she prefers for getting the job done.

Angie begins with a wide-angle shot of the poppy field where there's an interesting flag-draped building in the background. She uses the short end of a 24-105mm zoom to capture the scene, and her exposure settings are 1/320, f/13, at ISO 2,500. She explains that she chose a relatively high shutter speed to prevent subject movement on this windy day, and there's much more to learn while watching her set up her shots.

Angie then moves on to macro photography and walks you through the process she employs for this much different approach. This time she's shooting  with a 70-200mm f/4 zoom with it's  Macro switch activated. Now her settings are 1/320, f/4 at ISO 640. You'll see how she frames up a single red poppy so it's separated from a soft green background in a way that makes the flower really stand out.

There's much more to learn, as Angie compares how different aperture settings affect results, and she compare the Macro and Standard modes of her telephoto zoom. Then she wraps up the lesson with a list of all the key considerations. You may even want to make a screengrab of this summary for future reference.

Angie's instructional YouTube channel has almost 44K subscribers for good reason, and we encourage you to take a look.

And on a related note, don't miss the tutorial we posted recently with another accomplished pro who explains when and how you should use the camera's Shutter Priority exposure mode to eliminate camera and subject movement from your photographs.