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Taking Professional Quality Pictures of Your Flowers

10:39 am by webmann in flowers, photography

Image by Darwin Bell via FlickrWhen people see me taking pictures of flowers on an overcast day, most of them simply shake their heads thinking that I am crazy. “Why don’t you take pictures on a sunny day?” they ask.

Sunny days are great for going to the park for a picnic, but they do not work well for taking pictures of flowers in my yard or garden. Let me have a cloudy day, however, and me and my camera can do some magic!

In this article, you will find seven different photography techniques that you can use to get good pictures even in the sunshine. Also, I will describe some easy to make equipment that you can use with your camera to take great pictures. It doesn’t matter if you use an advanced DSLR camera or a simple “point and shoot” digicam, these methods can allow you take pictures that you will be proud of.

Although most people think that the best time to take pictures is on a clear and sunny day, this is not exactly true. When pictures are taken in full sun, the light can reflect off of the petals and leaves, creating dark shadows that are distracting. Full sunshine, no matter how good it feels on your face, just will not give you the best picture of your beloved flowers. Pictures that are taken on partly cloudy or cloudy days allow the flowers to be evenly lit without causing any shadows or shiny spots.

1. Be patient. Look for a cloudy or overcast day.

It has already been said that you will get the best pictures on an overcast day, so you may want to be patient and wait for that perfect day to get the best pictures of your flowers possible. It is also a good day to take portraits of your kids and family as well. This can allow you to take a picture without the nose shadowing that is common in pictures taken on sunny days. Even if it is a day that is partly cloudy, simply wait for a cloud to block the sun to take your picture. Just be sure that you adjust the exposure as needed to allow for the light intensity decrease.

2. Wait until the right time.

The best way to avoid bright sun is to not take pictures during the midday. This is when the sun is at its peak and by taking pictures in the mornings with the dew on the petals and leaves or in the late afternoons or evening, you will be able to get those beautiful pictures that you are looking for.

3. Create your own cloudy day.

Sometimes it is just not possible to wait for a cloudy day. If this is you, you can take control and make your own cloudy day. Make softer lighting conditions by using diffusing material to block the sunlight. This can be done very simply with a bed sheet, t-shirt, drop cloth, white garbage bag, or frosted glass. By holding it between the flower and the harsh sunlight, you can diffuse the light enough to make a significant difference in your picture. Take a picture with your homemade diffuser and without the diffuser, so that you can see the major difference that occurs.

If you want to make a diffuser that you can conveniently carry around, take a wire coat hanger and pull the bottom until it makes a square. The coat hanger hook becomes the handle, and by wrapping a white shopping bag around the square, you can use the diffuser to get the pictures that you are looking for. This will allow you to create soft light any time you need it.

4. Eclipse the sun yourself.

There are times when it is necessary to block the sun completely. One example when this may be needed is if the background has too much texture or color that will distract the eye from your pictorial target. By creating a dark area behind the flowers you are targeting, you can help to keep the eye on the flowers, rather than the background. To do this, you hold some opaque material like a sheet of cardboard against the sunlight and continue to move it until you get a shadow on the background. Make sure that the shadow does not cover the flowers, but only covers the background. (You may need an extra pair of hands to hold the screening material.) This helps the flower to stand out against a background that is dark.

5. Use the sun for your good.

You may find that there are some times when you want sun in your pictures. You may for instance want a picture of a little flower growing in a really shady spot. How do you make it stand out? The solution to this is to use a shiny material like aluminum foil to reflect the light into the shadowy area. This simple and easy trick will give your picture a major impact. Any reflective surface can be used, including a mirror, foiled gift wrapping paper, white cardboard, or even a copper or gold colored foil if you want to give your pictures a warmer look.

6. For drama, add backlight.

If you have read any photography books, you have most likely read about keeping the sun at your back. This is a hint that should be kept in mind, but it is not a definite rule. If you want the flowers to glow and stand out, take a picture with them backlit by the sun. Face the sun and allow the sun to be behind the flowers. By increasing your exposure by one or two stops you will be able to get a wide range of effects, from a look that resembles stained-glass to a more silhouetted look. You will notice this the most with more translucent flowers, like pansies, poppies, or nasturtiums.

7. The most important thing is to have fun.

Something that you should always aim for when taking pictures of your flowers is to have fun. Use different diffusers, techniques, and positions when taking pictures. You may find a new technique that you will love!

On a rainy or overcast day, take a photo safari and take pictures of flowers and plants. Try to take a picture of the same flower in several different lighting conditions to allow you to see which one works best for your flower and for your visual preferences.

Author Bio:

Kai Virihaur took his first images with a simple box camera at age 10, at about the same time he grew his first pumpkins in his Mother’s flower garden. Later, he has had some of his photographs shown in art galleries.

Today, Kai is committed to using digital photography. Working in the darkroom with the smelly chemicals was a challenge, digital photography is so much easier and offers more creative control also.

Kai’s blog, www.A1PhotoTips, allows him to share the knowledge that he has gained over the years to help you make better pictures. On his blog, you will find new useful photography lessons several times each week.

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Best Tips For Starting An Organic Garden

9:24 am by webmann in backyard garden, backyard gardening, gardening tips, indoor herb garden, new brunswick, vegetable garden

Instead of chemicals in your soil and on your food, why not try organic gardening?Begin with just a few plants in pots or a small garden area, tuck a few vegetables in your flower beds, or go really wild and make your whole yard into a garden! 

Actually, if it’s your first garden, it’s better to start small.Everything looks so wonderful in catalogs that gardeners have a tendency to plant more than they can reasonably care for!Even though gardening is a rewarding and fun pastime, it helps to keep in mind it’s also a lot of work.  Half way through the growing season you may wish you’d been a little more moderate in your planting.It’s better to start small with your first garden, and make biggers ones as you get more experience!

On Location…

Like the real estate agents are fond of saying, “It’s all about location, location, location.Some plants thrive in the shade, but they’re usually flowers. Vegetables usually need a lot of sunshine.Ther right amount of sunshine is one thing you can’t provide artificially. Even electrical lights wouldn’t really do the trick, and one could hardly call that practical anyway.

Any garden, whether organic or not, needs ample sunshine to thrive.Best results are obtained by putting your pots of plants or garden area in a location with at least 6 hours of sun daily.  While it’s nice to locate the garden close to the house for easy access, shade from the house or trees may not make that possible.Easy access is good when you can get it, but sunshine is most important.

Plants can’t sit in water, so besides ample sunshine, a garden location should drain well.It’s great to have a good, fertile soil, but if that’s lacking, soil amendments can be added as needed.

Down and Dirty

Adding compost will help your soil no matter what type it is.To improve the soil so plants will grow better, you can also use natural fertilizers and organic materials.The top 6 inches of soil holds most vegetable roots, so double digging or tilling will easily mix materials into the soil where the roots can reach them.

Time to Plant

Seed catalogs and nurseries are brimming with all types of vegetables.It’s important to choose stuff to grow your family will eat, but it’s also necessary to choose plants that will do well in your area.Long season crops like sweet potatoes, for instance, wouldn’t do so well in the far north, while a cool climate crop like peas wouldn’t last in the heat of a southern summer.

Mulching your vegetables with organic material helps conserve water, adds humus and nutrients as well as discourage weeds from growing.It’s a fantastic way to help your plants by improving garden soil and keeping weeds at bay!

Don’t Let Them Bug You

Where there’s lovely young plants, there’s bugs looking for a meal.One option is to hand pick caterpillars and other bugs off plants. Spraying the plant with plain or soapy water will also help dislodge bugs..  

 Not all bugs are bad, and some are even beneficial such as ladybugs, green lacewings, praying mantis, spiders and wasps since they eat insects that try to eat your vegetables. 

Companion planting with insect repellant plants such as marigolds or nasturtiums can also help keep bugs away from your garden.

It also helps to learn to live with a certain amount of imperfections.Vegetables don’t have to be 100% perfect to taste good.Problem spots can be cut away from the food before eating it.

Get Rid of Those Weeds!

You can call a weed “a plant growing in the wrong place.That’s a pretty good definition.If a plant is growing you didn’t want, till it under, hoe it out, pull it up… just get rid of it.Whatever method you use, just get it out of the garden.There is only so much water and nutrients in the soil to go around, and weeds steal some your vegetable plants could be using.

All Set To Garden!

The right ingredients for a great organic garden include a good location, fertile soil, the right plants for your climate, and keeping the garden free of weeds and bad bugs.  Growing an organic garden is a wonderful way to put great tasting food in your diet.Enjoy growing your own organic vegetables!

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The Best Garden Tools

9:24 am by webmann in backyard garden, backyard gardening, gardening tips, indoor herb garden, new brunswick, vegetable garden

It is necessary for you to invest in some basic tools in order to start a garden. However, such tools will certainly not be costing you too much. Yard sales or flea markets may well make such tools available for you at costs even below a hundred dollars. In any case it is better to avoid purchasing the expensive tools while starting the practice of gardening because it might be that interest in gardening is lost very soon and the entire investment in garden tools turns out to be a loss.

 

Starting with the shovel and the rake- the two basic garden tools now there are quite a few basic tools for gardening that are available. Among these you can proceed to buy the things that you will really need more.

 

The spading fork is to be chosen as the first and foremost garden tool. This is because before any kind of planting is to be done the soil needs to be opened and improved. The spading fork will dig into hard soil and break up the ground. Next comes the need of a hoe. This is used in weeding and cultivating the surface of the soil in order to facilitate the penetration of water and plant nutrients.

 

A watering can is to be selected next. While choosing this it is to be remembered that long nozzles are preferable as they allow the water to come out at a gentle rate of flow and also prove to be helpful in reaching across longer distances. For watering young seedlings the watering can with a detachable spray head is best suited.

 

A round-ended shovel is to be importantly selected. This proves to be useful in case of larger digging projects like planting of shrubs and trees. There is also the need to buy a good bow rake- the one that has short tines on a side attached to a metal frame or bow. This comes of use in leveling the soil after the soil has been turned out before planting. It also helps in removing large chunks of earth or rocks from the soil. The bow rake can also be turned over and its flat side used for smoothing soil for planting preparation.

 

Finally, a pair of garden shears fitting comfortably in hand is to be opted for. The shears or clippers as they are sometimes referred to, serve the object of pruning, shaping and removing leaves or branches. There are expensive shears available too but these are only to be opted for in case gardening really becomes a fascinating hobby.

 

Over time and upon longer usage the tools used for gardening may become dull. This brings the need to sharpen them. The right file is to be chosen for sharpening. Large coarse files are meant especially for trimming and shaping materials and for smoothening and shaping edges small fine files are to be used.

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Using Perennials, Such As The Simple Yarrow, in Gardening

12:33 pm by webmann in backyard garden, backyard gardening, gardening tips, indoor herb garden, new brunswick, vegetable garden

A surprising number of folk now fully understand that a beautifully well manicured garden can add an incredibly large amount of extra cash worth to their house. Further to this, a cleverly designed garden can seriously enhance the amount of useful space for your family and you. Because of these reasons, and a few more besides, landscaping has, over the years, grown to become an incredibly popular hobby. High on the agenda for nearly all landscapers is a gorgeous annual display of colorful and varied blooms.

While a large number of landscape gardeners opt to create color by using annuals, the remainder decide that using  perennial plants is the best method.  Annuals are those flowers which {grow, flower and die|germinate, develop, bloom and die} all in the single year whereas perennials will continue to flower year upon year. Obviously there are plus points and disadvantages for both annuals and perennial plants and landscaping is all about choosing the the most suitable blend of the two.

Many folk experience heart warming memories of distant days spent in a grandmother’s garden enjoying the wonderous fragrances of many old fashioned favorite perennials. Sadly it can be rather difficult for even the most keen gardener (including some experienced professionals) to replicate old fashioned gardens because a large number of the specific types/cultivars are no longer available. You will be happy to hear that many of the older varieties have been replaced by strains which are more able to withstand disease, so you can often discover suitable replacements which have hardly any (other) difference to the old fashioned plant.

Old Fashioned Garden Perennials

One of the most popular perennial garden plants used in landscaping today is the Yarrow which was first used in American gardens in colonial days when it was introduced from Europe. Achillea is an ancient plant used since the days of the Greek hero Achilles (from whom the plant gets it’s name) who used it to treat his soldiers. Achillea can stop bleeding and works amazingly well at healing wounds.

Yarrow

Achillea millefolium has beautiful flattish groups of small blooms that look rather like daisies. Achillea  come with flower heads in a variety of colors ranging from various shades of yellows, whites and pinks. Achillea are thought by most landscape gardeners to be considerably easy perennials to cultivate. They are so simple to propagate because they are considerably invasive plants which can be spotted growing on the poorest of ground. If you want to witness success with Achillea you only need to avoid growing in extremely wet or poorly drained soil. The plants are fantastic at tolerating drought conditions. Achillea ptarmica and Achillea millefolium are two of the most often chosen varieties but there are various other types available.

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Keep These Home Gardening Tips In The Front Of Your mind

12:33 pm by webmann in backyard garden, backyard gardening, gardening tips, indoor herb garden, new brunswick, vegetable garden

There are tons of different home gardening tips, indoor gardening tips, organic gardening tips, vegetable gardening tips – no wonder the average gardener finds it so overwhelming to figure out just which specific tips are going to be most useful to them. If this is your situation, you should know that out of all of these, there are a few home gardening tips in particular that are going to be useful for you to learn.

Before you can properly or fully understand these tips however you are going to need to learn a bit more about home gardening and what it is all about.

What it is

Home gardening is a type of gardening that continues to grow in popularity. Home gardeners can product tasty, nutritious vegetables and beautiful flowers, and to be a successful gardener you really need to take advantage of the different home gardening tips that are out there.

Home Gardening Tips

One of the best home gardening tips is to choose the right garden site. Most plants need to be exposed to full or near full sunlight with deep, fertile and well drained soil depending on the type of plant you are working with of course. Being near a water outlet and away from competition from existing trees and shrubs is a great location for your garden.

Of course this is one of the most important tips of all because if you do not choose the right location for planting, you are not going to have any success.

It is very important in home gardening to select the right crops to plant. With all the things a home gardener has to worry about, one of the major processes is also one of the first decisions you will have to make in deciding what kind of vegetables to grow.

some crops like watermelon, cucumbers and winter squash require a lot more space than normal to grow, while you might focus vegetable plants like tomatoes or potatoes as they don't need as much room.

How serious you get into your gardening is really dependant on the amount of time and effort you can devote to it and upon your skill level. Regardless, these tips are going to come in very handy and help get you started.

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