Photos of flowers

No I haven’t sold my soul to the genre of flower photography but I went to a Cambridge Camera Club event this week where the speaker was Hemant Jariwala who is a specialist. I was not inclined to go but Juni encouraged me. ‘You might learn something’ she said. So I did and I did. Go and learn that is.

I learnt of course that flower photographers are just like those who specialise in other genres. They are obsessives. But there’s nothing wrong with that because that’s how they become really good and although many of Hemant’s images left me cold some were extremely good. This obsession means he takes lots of pictures of the same flower(s), just to make sure that he gets a handful of really good ones, and that he always uses a tripod.

That’s a first big difference between us. Because I grew up with film I’m inclined to only take a small number of shots of a particular subject, often only one, and because I tend to be always on the move I never use a tripod.

I do occasionally take photographs of flowers, they are after all rather photogenic, and I did learn, or relearn, the following in particular:

• the background is as important as the subject;
• don’t let anything encroach on the subject;
• focus is everything; and
• colours have got to work together.

With these points in mind I’ve looked at a few flower photographs I’ve recently taken. The top three this year and none of them with any regard for any of the rules I’ve just learnt.