6 Tips to Help You Capture Stunning Flower Photos

For so many customers who visited The Flower Shed U-Pick farm for our first season being opened, the best part of their trip was freezing time by taking pictures of the beautiful blooms and pollinators buzzing around, or of their arrangements when they got home.

Being at The Flower Shed's U-Pick farm, customers get to experience the immersive beauty of cut flowers as they wandered the field picking the perfect bouquet to take home with them.

Photo of flowers picked by: @boys.in.neutrals on Instagram.

One of the best parts about having a flower farm opened to the public is seeing the creative pictures you all share with us at the end of your trip out to Naylor, Georgia. We thought it would be special to share some of our customer's best pictures and include some helpful tips and tricks to capture the best shot possible out of your arrangements!

1. Simplify the picture's background.

Flowers are dainty, meaning they are pretty while being delicately small in size. Flowers will be seen better in pictures if they are in-front of a simple background. Try reducing clutter from behind the flowers or moving the arrangement to wall before taking the shot.

Removing busy backgrounds can completely elevate any flower arrangement picture by showcasing the blooms, rather than a busy countertop or table. The picture above has two bud vase arrangements right in front of wallpaper. Even though the wallpaper has multiple shades of color, the wall itself does not have other objects distracting from the blooms.

Imagine this shot on your dining room table with a television on in the background, your pup drinking water from its bowl, and your kid playing with toys on the couch. The picture would not have the same focus on the flowers as this shot, and would distract from the flowers you are trying to showcase!

2. Think about your focus, or try out portrait mode.

Using portrait mode when taking pictures of flowers is a game changer. If you have an iPhone X or later (or an iPhone 7 plus / iPhone 8 plus), portrait mode is built right into your camera! Simply open your phone's camera app and swipe over to the "portrait" setting, and get to focusing! You can adjust the focus after you've taken the picture through the "edit" tool.

Photo of a zinnia flower by: @LoganMariePhotog on Instagram.

If you are just starting out with photography on a camera, we've got you covered there too! One of our photographer friends here in south Georgia, @LoganMariePhotog on Instagram gave us some insight about focusing on flowers with a camera.

"When capturing large groups of flowers, have your f-stop minimum 4.0. It'll help make sure all flowers are in focus! When focusing on one flower, an f-stop of 2.0-2.5 will make your background have lots of bokeh and your flowers pop!"

The "f" in f-stop stands for the focal length of the lens. Focal length itself refers to the lens' field of view. However, f-stop really refers to how much light you allow to hit your lens' sensor.

Photo of flowers picked by: @LoganMariePhotog on Instagram.

Learning the technique of focusing does not have to be complicated! Doing your best to keep the camera focused on the blooms rather than another object in the picture will help the bouquet stand out in a picture and overall look better.

3. Try to minimize any wind disturbance.

Photo by @createdbycaitlynne on Instagram.

I can't even begin to count the number of times that wind has ruined a perfect flower picture! To help combat this, you can use your hand to steady the stem of a flower in the field when taking pictures. Or, if you have a friend helping you out, have them stand in front of the flowers where the wind is hitting them to minimize any disturbance.

4. Lighting, lighting, lighting!

Utilizing the right lighting with flower photography can be a huge obstacle to getting the right shot. Try to shoot on an overcast day if you are outside. If your arrangement is on the dining room table, try to get light coming from softer, indirect sources.

Pictured above is one arrangement in three different spots of our barn here at The Flower Shed on the same day at the same time. The first picture shows a spread of even-lighting on both sides of the bouquet, making the arrangement clearly visible. The second picture shows the flowers in a dark corner of the barn. The flowers are hardly recognizable as there is hardly any light shining on them! The third picture has harsh back-light that makes the background pop more than the flowers themselves.

Take your time to find the best lighting in your house. Your flowers can look completely different on your countertop, dining room table, or on the kitchen island because of what light your camera has to work with.

5. Pick the right vase for your arrangement.

This can probably go without saying, but pick the right vase for your arrangement! When taking pictures of flowers, they should make sense for the vase they are put in. Without giving proper thought to what vase to use, your flowers could look too small or too large for their vase and completely throw off the entire picture.

What generally looks best when I take pictures of arrangements is picking a vase about half the length of the stems. Any larger could make the vase look too small, and the flowers have a greater chance to topple over from being top heavy. A vase too large can make the arrangement you worked so hard on look wimpy and small.

Lets think back to the thin green vase from before. The vase was about half the height of the stem length and the opening was small enough to comfortably fit the four stems. I tossed the same flowers in another green vase that was taller with a larger opening and the flowers look pretty awful to say the least. The size of the vase has completely thrown off the overall look of the photo!

6. Use blooms to create fun shapes.

The last tip we have for you today is to add visual interest to your pictures by using the blooms to create fun shapes! You can do this by cutting the blooms from its stem to spell out a word, or putting multiple arrangements together to make a desired shape.

We often use this tip to announce things on our social media pages! The picture above was used as a promotional picture for flowers available on our website. The picture received a lot of engagement online and people really enjoyed the fun take on our initials, TFS. Get creative and start shooting, you never know what pictures you will come up with!

Photo of three arrangements in a heart shape by @betterhalffarms on Instagram

If you use any of these tips, let us know how it worked for you! You can find us on Instagram @theflower_shed or Facebook @theflowershedfarm. We cannot wait to see what you come up with!