Flower power

The sun is shining, the gardens are exploding in an abundance of colour, this is the day! Head out with your Nikon to take luscious pictures of nature’s spectacular displays with Edyta Rice

- Edyta Rice

Flower and landscape photography are a match made in heaven, especially at this time of year. All the bright and colourful flora is coming into bloom and the landscapes are being evenly lit by the sun (with some cloud coverage, of course). Never is there a better time to shoot the alluring flowers in their natural habitats, than in the spring.

But it can be tricky to know where to begin, with so much potential everywhere. Fear not, as I’ll show you how to find the best local blooms (even if that’s your own garden), figure out the best times to shoot them, and share my compositional and shooting tricks for stunning shots.

We’ll take a closer look at how we can photograph everything from basic buds to nature’s awe-inspiring carpets of colour. Starting at the beginning – since the first and fundamental necessity is always composition – we’ll look at how to design pleasing floral images. While fields of flowers and gardens may look magnificent in person, they can seem a little bit lacking when reproduced in two-dimensional form, which doesn’t necessarily make the best images, so we’ll discover how to inject some creativity into our shots.

And remember, just because a lot of this is for landscapes, that doesn’t mean that you can’t apply these techniques to your own garden! So without further delay, let’s immerse ourselves in the natural beauty that surrounds us.

THE BASIC SETUP