Create Your Own Backgrounds For Flower Photography

If you like shooting blooms on location, you need to consider the background very carefully. Out of focus highlights and objects like fence posts, wheelie bins and people can easily ruin your pictures even with judicious depth-of-field control. Getting round the problem is potentially very simple. Not only that, but you can be creative too.

Gear Suggestions:

Backgrounds

You can use something purpose-made like a reflector or a store-bought background or create your own from a print or a sheet of card.

Sheets of coloured card work fine but stay away from glossy finishes because there could be reflection problems. Matt, single-coloured card works fine, but you can also be more imaginative and paint or print your own using your photo printer.

To help with keeping the background blurred, produce a blurred background in the first place so you do not have to worry about aperture choice so much when you come to shooting.

Your 'background' does not have to be big either. If you are shooting macro studies, a sheet of A4-size card will do nicely.

Tripod

Some botanic gardens do not allow the use of tripods or have restrictions, so you need to check this. Many organisations seem to take the view that a tripod means professional and that means commercial photography. Some gardens ban commercial photography and hence tripods unless permission or payment is agreed in advance. Just check that before you pay up and enter, or stick with public gardens, heathlands or your own garden.

Techniques:

First thing to say here is that this approach will not be welcomed everywhere so please do not roll up to an award-winning garden and start setting up you background system.

How you work with your background is up to you. With macro, it is possible to handhold your DSLR and the card background behind the subject but it is not comfortable, nor is it great technique. Fast shutter speeds are essential and focusing can be a challenge. It's much easier to have the camera on a tripod so holding the background a little way behind the subject is simple enough. Even better, if you have a spare tripod or a lighting stand, use that to hold the background in place.

When composing your images just make sure the background fills your viewfinder frame – or at least enough of your subject to allow cropping.

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