P#2 Q#3b: Wind Challenges in Floral Photography

When it Comes to Weather and Floral Photography - Don't Get Stuck in the Wind

Tony Sweet: If it's very windy, you forget about still flowers. This is not going to happen.

You can't buy any tool to keep them still. You can't buy any kind of clamp, or stick or any kind of device that holds up the stalk of the flower. It's just impossible.

So what I like to do is use the wind to your advantage. I then use the longest exposure I can. Just let the flower whip around in the wind for a while.

The image gets very blurry and very soft. It can be very beautiful.

You also have the option of shooting multiple exposures of it if you can do that in-camera.

The difference is when you shoot a multiple exposure, the exposure times are much quicker. So if you shoot like eight or ten, at a burst, like eight or ten in a row. It will look more abstract but it will be faster exposure. There might be ten of the flower moving very slightly, but it gives it a very fine arts look.

You could also use flash. Like still flash. Let the flower blow for about a second and then pop a flash at the end of that exposure and get some nice detail there.

So there are things you can do, but getting them to be perfectly still is not one of them!

Audri Lanford: Yeah. And the way we met was I took a class with you at Betterphoto.com. One of the things that we did was multiple exposures in the camera. I did those with flowers, and it really expanded the kinds of things you can do.

So if your camera does allow you to try that, it's definitely worth looking in the manual and figuring it out, because some of the effects are just incredible.

Tony Sweet: It's a lot of fun. All cameras aren't designed to do multiple exposures in-camera, but you can actually shoot ten of those images.

If you're shooting a Canon or other camera that cannot perform in-camera multiple exposures, you can shoot ten (or any number of) exposures, and combine them in software to get the identical look.

There's a technique our good friend Ellen Anon has in a book on "Photoshop for Photographers" and she discusses this technique. It's very easy to read, very easy to understand.

Keep these tips in mind for your next floral photography project.