Alliums Photography

You will often find magnificent displays of alliums in ornamental gardens but you will also find them in vegetable plots everywhere – leeks, garlic and onions are all alliums.

If you enjoy shooting this perennial, plant some bulbs this autumn ready to shoot next year. There are hundreds of species and come in all sorts of colours and sizes, but the round flowerhead is dramatic in most of them.

Gear Suggestions:

A macro lens will let you explore fine detail but you should be able to use a telephoto zoom with a macro mode. Or fit an extension tube, if you have one, to the lens.

A tripod, a reflector, the Wimberly Plamp and bits of coloured card all have a part to play, too, if required.

Technique:

How you approach the subject depends largely on the display. You could get down low, set a wide aperture and have one flowerhead prominent against a lovely blurred background. Or if there is just the odd plant, get in close and shoot abstract.

If you shoot wide open, you may be able to shoot handheld, but a tripod does make life easier and gives you total freedom with aperture choice. If it is windy, use a Wimberley Plamp to hold your subject steady.

Watch your backgrounds. An allium standing out against a blurred backdrop looks great but if you are shooting much closer in, you may prefer to place a sheet of coloured card behind, to avoid messy backgrounds.

As with many floral subjects, direct sun can look rather too harsh, so wait until you get some cloud cover just to take the edge off the lighting. Or create your own shade with a pop-up reflector or by standing in the right place to create your own. If you do use a reflector and don't have a willing assistant you'll probably find it easier to position your camera on a tripod and use its self-timer to take the shot. This will give you time to position a reflector  to create the shade for the background to de-emphasize its effect.

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