9 Tips for Photographing the Floral Landscape
If you’ve been following my work for any length of time, you know I love a floral landscape. Fields of wildflowers make me happy and I enjoy exploring all the different ways to photograph them. Photographing floral landscapes can be a rewarding and creative experience. Many of the same guidelines that apply to general landscape photography apply when photographing wildflowers in the landscape. A few specific tips can help for capturing beautiful floral landscapes:
1. Choose the Right Time and Lighting
Golden Hour: Like any landscape image, photographing wildflowers in the landscape during the golden hour (shortly after sunrise or just before sunset) benefits from the soft, warm light that enhances the colors and adds depth. The angle of the sun is low, casting long shadows and enveloping the scene in a golden, almost magical glow. This soft, warm light can add depth, texture, and richness to your photos, making it a favorite time for photographers.
Blue Hour: This magical and fleeting period in photography occurs just before sunrise and just after sunset. During this time, the sun is below the horizon, and the sky takes on a rich, deep blue hue, offering unique lighting conditions that are softer and more diffused compared to the harsh light of midday. The overall color temperature during blue hour is cool, often ranging from blue to purple tones, which adds a serene and calming effect to photos. The sky's hue shifts from dark blue to light turquoise and deepens as the sun moves further below the horizon.
Overcast Days: Cloudy or overcast days can provide even, diffused light, which is ideal for reducing harsh shadows and avoiding overexposed highlights, especially for vibrant flowers. Including a stormy sky above a field of flowers offers an interesting contrast between the cheerful, colorful wildflowers and drama of a stormy sky.
Side Lighting: Side lighting can bring out texture and detail in flowers, creating beautiful shadows and highlights that add dimension.
Don’t Rule out Mid-day: Common knowledge is that shooting in mid-day light is a no-no for serious photographers. Mid-day light often leads to harsh contrast in images with very dark shadows and hot highlights that strip the color from the flowers and leads to a very unpleasing photograph. However, don’t completely rule out shooting in this light. For example, if the sky is full of those puffy cotton candy clouds that are moving across the sky at a good clip, you just need to wait until a nice thick cloud covers the sun and creates that softbox effect. Wait until your shadow disappears producing a nice even light, and then start shooting. The results can be stunning.
Mid-day light when diffused by a puffy cloud can produce stunning results.
Composition Techniques
Rule of Thirds: Position your flowers or the focal point of your landscape off-center, either on the left or right third of the frame. This creates a more dynamic composition and leads the viewer's eye through the scene.
Leading Lines: Use natural lines (like winding paths, fences, or rows of flowers) to guide the viewer’s eye toward the focal point.
Layering: Include layers of flowers at different distances (foreground, mid-ground, and background). This adds depth and makes the image feel more three-dimensional.
Layers of common harebells, fireweed, and goldenrod at different distances (foreground, mid-ground) along with the mountain layers in the background adds depth and makes the image feel more three-dimensional. Image taken during blue hour.
Canon R5, EF 16-35mm lens with adapter @ 16mm, 1/320 s, f/6.3, ISO 1600
3. Wide-angle Macro Landscapes
Floral landscapes with flowers up close and center in the foreground while also including a wide view of the landscape can create an impactful image that emphasizes the beautiful shapes of the flowers. This technique of getting up close with a wide-angle lens offers a surreal perspective on landscapes. To capture these types of images effectively, include a focal point or background subject for the flowers to lead up to, such as trees, rock formations, or mountains.
Start with a small aperture (e.g., f/22) for greater depth of field and focus at the hyperfocal distance. When you focus at the hyperfocal distance, everything from half that distance to infinity will appear in focus, allowing for maximum depth of field. This is particularly important for wide-angle landscape photography, where you want both near and distant objects to be sharp. By setting focus at the hyperfocal distance, you avoid the need for precise focusing on distant objects or close subjects. There is a mathematical formula for figuring out hyperfocal distance, if you want to be perfectly precise about it. You can also estimate and use trial and error to get it perfect. It usually falls about 2/3rds into your scene. Start there and adjust after checking that the foreground and background are in focus in your image. You can also download apps that will tell you the hyperfocal distance based on camera, lens, etc.
If the whole scene isn’t sharp enough for you, try the focus stacking technique.
Portrait style works well with wide-angle macro photography.
4. Focus Stacking
When getting extremely close to the flowers, consider focus stacking—capturing multiple images at different focal points and then merging them. Use a higher aperture like f/16 to minimize the number of images needed. This technique blends multiple images taken at different focus points. Many of the newer cameras have a built-in “focus bracketing” feature to take multiple images with different focus points. You can then blend them together in post-processing for sharpness throughout the image. On the Canon R5 this feature is located under the “camera” menu (the camera icon) on the 5th screen.
Be mindful of wind conditions, as it can make focus stacking challenging almost impossible. If the flowers are swaying, wait for a moment of stillness to take your stack. Or if the wind does not subside, pull your camera back to capture fewer images.
Stacking the images can be done in post-processing software like Photoshop, Luminar, or dedicated programs like Helicon. Helicon produces the best results in my experience.
Mexican golden poppies under the spring full moon. I used Photoshop to manually stack five images. A slight breeze caused some ghosting in this image but I was able to fix it with Photoshop.
5. Weather Conditions
Wind: If there is wind, try to wait for calm moments or use a faster shutter speed (e.g., 1/1000 sec or higher) to freeze the motion of swaying flowers. Or, lean into the motion adjusting your shutter speed to get some of the flowers frozen and some in motion.
This image of marsh paintbrush taken in a wet meadow in the Jemez Mountains during Blue Hour and an on-coming summer monsoon storm. Canon R5, EF 16-35mm lens with adapter @ 16mm.
0.6 sec, f/18, ISO 200
6. Use the Environment
Foreground and Background Elements: Incorporate environmental elements like trees, hills, or skies to give context to your floral landscape. A blurred distant mountain or sky can add a serene background that enhances the beauty of the flowers.
Interaction with Wildlife: Including insects like bees, butterflies, or birds interacting with the flowers can add a sense of life to the scene.
7. Camera Settings
Shutter Speed: Adjust depending on your light conditions and whether you need to freeze motion (fast shutter speed for windy conditions or insects, slow shutter speed for long exposures in still conditions).
ISO: Keep ISO as low as possible to minimize noise, especially if you're shooting in bright conditions or with a tripod.
White Balance: Use the correct white balance for the scene (Daylight for warm hues, Cloudy for softer tones, etc.), or adjust in post-production to fine-tune the colors.
8. Lens Choices
Wide-Angle Lens (16mm-35mm): A wide-angle lens is perfect for capturing vast fields of flowers or large landscapes with lots of flowers.
Wide-Angle Macro Lens: These specialized lenses allows you to capture close-up subjects with a wide field of view, making it particularly useful for photographing small objects in their environment while still including the context around them. The Venus Optics Laowa 15mm f/4 Macro Lens is an all manual lens that I like to experiment with and produces interesting wide-angle macro shots.
9. Post-Processing
Color Adjustment: Enhance the vibrancy and saturation of the flowers, but be careful not to overdo it. Slight adjustments to contrast can help flowers stand out.
Sharpening: Gently sharpen the details of the flowers, especially if you're working with a shallow depth of field where some parts of the flowers may be slightly out of focus.
Cropping: In post-production, crop out any distracting elements at the edges of the frame that may take away from the composition.
Take your time to explore different angles, compositions, and lighting. Floral landscapes can change dramatically depending on the time of day and the weather, so be patient and keep experimenting.
Floral landscapes allow for a mix of creativity and technical skills. With these tips, you can capture the stunning beauty of flowers in their natural environments!
Want to learn more about photographing landscapes and telling visual stories? Join me in-person in April 2025 for a 5-day workshop in the beautiful surrounds of Santa Fe.
