Picture: Li Jishan

鈥淪inging birds, dancing willows and flowers extend all along the river to a mountainous village鈥� through this single line of Du Mu(a famous Chinese poet in Tang dynasty), a colorful and vigorous picture of spring will automatically come in to our minds. As spring comes, photography lovers couldn鈥檛 wait to capture the beautiful view of spring with their lenses. No, worry. We will list some tips for shooting below. Hope these can be helpful to you.

1. choose the right lens and camera

In fact, it doesn鈥�t matter if you don鈥�t have a camera. Even mobile phone or small DC can contribute to wonderful photos. Although, professional camera can do much better when operation of course.

2. choose of lens

The lens can be wide angle, medium distance or telephoto for different choice will have different effects. Telephoto lens like 70-200mm, 100-400mm can do good composition while neglecting the mussy of background. For macro lens, it can be used to shoot close-ups of flowers and the recommended focal length would be 100mm. In case you don鈥�t have macro or telephoto lens, a close-up ring or close-up tube may also be a choice. Just put it on you original lens to shorten focusing distance. In this way, you can also get a macro picture of flowers.

3.reflector

Lightening the shadows of flower will add the beauty of it. You can also substitute reflector with white paper plate, microwave oven tin foil or vehicle sun visor if don鈥�t have one.

4. Little watering can

Beads of water can provide other unexpected effects to your shooting. Flower with drippings will be looked more crystal-clear and lively. Then it can easily stand out of the background.

4. Use big aperture

Using big aperture is a good way to focus on your shooting object, creating a soft and misty background. If you are shooting at a low-light environment with some sparking spots, then a beautiful effect of bokeh would be achieved. One important point of big aperture is to ensure the clearness of focus point which reflects photographers鈥� main interest. For flower photography, the focus point is always the center of flower.

4. The presentation of light

There are some tips for light presentation when doing flower photography:

a. Frontlighting: Flower shot in frontlight would be rich in color and clear in shape. But this koind of picture would be to normal to hold some contrasts.

b. Backlighting: When shot in backlight, the flower would gain a great third dimension. Because the light can penetrate the petals, making it crystal and showing its outline.

7. composition 

There are a range of flower kind with various shape, size and petal. To create a successful picture of flower, you should make the focus point standing out. There are some methods for good composition when doing flower shooting.

A. Diagonal composition: it is suitable for shooting flowers on the branches.

B. Nine-grid composition: it鈥�s the most common composition method, highlighting the key points and leaving the blank space.

C. Center composition: it is often used for macro flower photography.

D. Foreground composition: Some flowers can be taken as the foreground as the distance between flowers is close.

8. avoid shaking 

Shaking is different to avoid when doing macro shooting. So it is important to have a stable tripod. Here, we strongly recommend Kingjoy鈥�s C83 tripod. It is impeccable no matter in stability or practicability, so can be applied in many situation and environment, especially in macro shooting.

There are lots of tripods available on the market. To choice a most cost-effective one, you can consider the factors below:

First, stability. Its the very first consideration that would decide the success of a shooting. With a loading capacity of 20kg, C83 can bear any professional long-lens camera.

Second, portability. The tripod shouldn鈥�t weigh too much for traveling photographers always prefer lighter equipment. Made from 10X carbon fiber tripod, C83 weighs only 1.32kg, which is suitable for most of needs.

Third, easy to store. C83 adopts a neat design without center column. It can be packed within a backpack easily with a folded height of only 480mm.

Lastly, suitable working height. The working height of C83 tripod ranges from 210mm to 1290mm. Its lowest shooting angle can reach to 85 degrees, which can be suitable for photographers with different heights.

The above are a few suggestions for everyone. Hope you get some ideas from them.

Appreciation of photos below