Kathleen Clemons Flower Photos

Nature photographer Kathleen Clemons' closeup images of flowers are dreamy and beautiful. She is  "known for her creative use of natural light and unique, stunning compositions."  

In her blog post titled "Work It," she gives hints on how she finds interesting points of view, including shooting the top of blooms as well as  from underneath the petals, and using vertical as well as horizontal  shots, especially against simple backgrounds. 

Her results are spectacular, so it pays to take a look. The entire post and photos can be found at:

Kathleen Clemons Photography - Work It

A sampling of her flowers:

The Photo Bee Blog

Britt Conley's PhotoGardenBee flower photography blog is a study of the wonder, structure, color, and beauty of flowers. For example, in the series of iris photos, below, she begins from an extreme-closeup of the flower bud, spent flower and internal structure, eventually pulling out so we can see a field of iris. 

The Photo Garden Bee loves flowers and photographing them, and it shows in her photos. She also sells fine art prints of her many photographs. Check out Britt's blog at The PhotoGardenBee.

Slender, pointed buds emerging from "worn out, cotton-like shawls"

Britt's favorite shot of the spent blossoms, calling them "hand dyed silk turbans"

Britt says, "One of the captivating things I love about irises are their petals. Like crossing two time signatures in music: a 4/4 background beat with a 3/4 topper, iris petals have three curled petals which crown theh four splayed beneath. It's one of those great oddities that makes them so wonderfully photogenic."

The garden full of irises

Daisy with curled petal against a blue background

Lobularia Maritima, alyssum

Apple blossoms from her "Wordless Wednesday" shots

Amaryllis in December

Amaryllis, from the genus Hippeastrum of the family Amaryllidaceae, are the glorious lily-like flowers that grow indoors during the long months of winter. They grow so rapidly and the blooms are so huge and colorful that they help us pass the time until we can actually get out into the garden and dig in the dirt. Below, instructions on making a composite of amaryllis blooms in Photoshop.

"Apple Blossom" amaryllis blooming in my kitchen

Setup for photographing amaryllis, setting the plant on the floor, using black poster board as a background with a lamp on top of a dresser for the light source. Take pictures from different angles for this composite.

After taking your photos, import two of the best into Photoshop. 

The image above, will be the flower that appears smaller, behind another brighter image. Double-click on the "Background" layer in order to unlock it.

Make a new layer and pull it below the original layer.

Go to Image/Canvas size, or Alt+Ctrl+C, and enter width and height sizes double what is already there.

Select the empty bottom layer and fill with black. Alt+Backspace will fill it with the foreground color in your toolbar

Background filled with black

Now work on the second photo. 

Unlock, add a new layer, and drag the new layer below the original layer. 

Delete the background for the flower layer using your favorite method.

Place the images beside each other. Drag the deleted-background image onto the black-background image.

You should have two image layers above a black background.

Go to CTRL+T on the selected top layer to transform it to the size you want. Hold down the Shift key while you transform in order to keep the proportions constant.

While on this top layer, apply the Lighten blend mode in the layers palette

Now select the middle layer, with your background image

CTRL+T transform this image to the size you want. You may want to adjust sizes and positions, including rotating images slightly, until you have the placement you want. Crop to the final size.

Final image of composite Amaryllis blossoms

Coral & Peach in the Garden

Pink suffused with shades of yellow--what more beautiful color in the garden is there than coral/peach? Entire swaths of my flower border are dedicated to this lovely color. It is warm but not aggressive, accommodating but not feeble. It complements the companion shades of lavenders and violets. Roses and daylilies especially seem to lend their hybridizing talents to corals and peaches.

Peach-pink tulips in the early spring bulb garden

Double coral columbine. These are not very tall, giving more of the impression of small double petalled roses. Surprisingly, these have reseeded for me.

American Peony Society gold medal winner Coral Sunset, an unusual shade in peonies, and an early season bloomer.

Papaver Orientalis, the Oriental poppy Watermelon. True to its name, this poppy is a luscious shade of watermelon pink.

 One of my favorite shrubs, the carnation-scented coral brooches of the viburnum Carlesii, the heavenly Korean Spice Bush. 

The prime rose shrub Easy Does It, with difficult-to-photograph dark coral flowers fading to a round-blossomed reddish orange that blends especially well with blue salvia.

 David Austin's Abraham Darby, studded with these innocently peach but powerfully scented cupped and quartered old-fashioned roses. 

Ruffle-edged peach-pink daylilies. Daylilies were meant to be this color--descendents of the original Hemerocallis Fulva, the tawny orange daylily, and Hemerocallis Flava, the sweet-scented yellow lemon daylily.

Flower Carpet Coral, the non-stop blooming, drought-resistant, low growing single-flowered rose that has earned its place in my sunny border.

Impressionist Flower Effects in Photoshop

Photographs of flowers lend themselves to filter effects in Photoshop. The following three photos have had several filters and blending modes added to them to lend impressionistic effects that do not detract from the original color and light, and in fact enhance them.

click for larger photo

Purple iris take on an unearthly glow

click for larger photo

Above, Flower Carpet roses transmute into a sea of luminous coral

click for larger photo

Two-color photos like the lilac on the lawn, above, lend themselves to this sort of effect. To achieve it, try the filters and blend modes as outlined below:

click for larger photo

1) Open a photo in Photoshop. CTRL+J to duplicate the background layer.
I have renamed the layers here to help define what happens in each layer.

2) For the first background layer, go to Filter/Artistic/Palette Knife.  

I used these settings: Stroke=32; Stroke Detail=2; Softness=2

3) Your effect should be something like this.  Now duplicate CTRL+J the Palette Knife layer.

4)  Go to Filter/Artistic/Dry Brush. 

I used these settings: Brush Size=3; Brush Detail=8' Texture=1

5) Now duplicate the Background layer CTRL+J and drag the layer to the top of the layer stack

.

6) Go to Filter/Artistic/Poster Edges with these settings:
Edge Thickneess=2; Edge Intensity=1; Posterization=1.
Adjust the opacity of this layer between 30 - 50%. 

7) Duplicate the Poster Edges layer and apply the same settings.

8) Now apply Blending modes to each layer:

Palette Knife layer=Lighten

Dry Brush layer=Screen

Poster Edges=Multiply (adjust opacity)

Poster Edges copy=Multiply (adjust opacity)

9) Turn off the Background layer if desired, and keep adjusting the top two Poster Edges layers opacity until you have the effect you want.

10) The final Hostas photo with impressionist effects, above.

"Think Like a Flower"

The following photos are borrowed from the Digital Photography School website Photographing Flowers by Elizabeth Halford, including comments and submitted pics at the end. The main tip is, get down close to where the flower lives, and experiment with not only macro, but zoom lens settings. Examples:

The patch of chamomile, above, doesn't tell the story the photographer wants to tell--it is too diffuse and far away.

By taking the photo above, in context, by using a macro blur to focus in on the blossom with the downward-facing petals, the photograph resulted in highlighting the relationship of the flowers within the clump.

The shot above was taken using a DSLR, using a  zoom lens looking up from a point lower on the hill where the poppies were growing.

You don't need to use macro for close up shots. The five-petal red rose, above, was taken from 2 feet away using a zoom lens.

You don't necessarily need a DSLR, either. The clean white cosmos, above, was taken with a simple point and shoot camera.

A fun close-up shot that tells the story of two upward-facing blossoms and one facing down.

Another shot using telephoto, which does interesting things to the background of this bright pink phlox while allowing a close-up focus.

Beautiful ground-level shot of backlit pink petals.

See more submitted photos at Photographing Flowers - A How-To