P#2 Q#5: What's the Best Way to Select the Background When Photographing a Flower?

Using backgrounds to enhance your flower photography

Tony Sweet: Boy, that is very subjective, but the more you do this, the more you get a sense of what works.

Just as an example, there's an area that I photograph at a garden in Baltimore City -that's where my family is from and I go there a lot to visit.

I go to the same tulip every year, because there is a green bush that's three feet behind it, and I know that if I use a 105 macro lens, I can focus on that tulip at a specific distance and get a very soft green background behind the pink, and the white, and the green.

So I think it's a function of just trying different things.

Backgrounds are important. They're critical to me. Again, I can't emphasize the importance of backgrounds enough.

As far as the background dominating: the background should never dominate a flower.

The flower is your subject, and like it says in the Kodak photo book -- the first thing you read when you buy a camera at any camera store -- is to show one subject clearly. And if your background competes with the subject, you're not showing one subject clearly, by definition. So it's just very important to have a very clean background, and not have the background overpower your subject.

For example, never use white backgrounds. Anything white pulls your eye away from the subject, there's no question about that. It's bright, your eye goes to the brightest spot first, and then to the sharpest.

So if the bright spot's your background, you'll lose the viewer right there.

And as far as whether to fill in the frame with the flower, that's always a great technique. If you want to have the entire flower, like a dahlia or an extremely photographic graphic intensive subject like that, just fill the frame. That means no holes at the corners.

Fill the entire frame with your subject -- that's valid also. So there's no real either-or, it's just a matter of how you do each one. They're both perfectly valid ways to make a picture.

Audri Lanford: So you can try both and see what works best in that specific situation.

Tony Sweet: Absolutely.

You've just got to be aware of the fact that certain things don't work: like holes, real black areas, real bright areas, very competitive busy backgrounds, or bright backgrounds.

It's very simple. It's got to be very clean: very obvious what the subject is, with a very non-competitive background. It's not rocket science.

Audri Lanford: Are there any other color combinations that you might not want for the background when the flower is a specific color?

Tony Sweet: Well, other bright colors as backgrounds are an issue, such as very bright hot yellow. But that depends. It's more white; any kind of bright white is just too much.

If it's subdued, like a grayish white and say a white flower in shade, which would almost turn bluish, that's OK. But any kind of white will pull your eye to it. That's just human nature. That's the way we're made.

So keep this in mind: it's important to keep your background at the foreground of your mind when you're planning your flower shot.