Photographing Flowers : Inspiration · Equipment · Technique

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Summary: Her Flower Photography is Art
Review: Not only is this book beautifully visual to look at, it is full of information and ideas. Though it's not for digital cameras per se but for 35mm instead. Photography is subjective and you can use the information to make you a better photographer. The same information about technique, philosophy, etc. can be used when you shoot with your digital camera. Many digital cameras have similar functions so that the information found can be carried over such as manual vs. auto focus. Lenses and filters can translate to using filters in Photoshop™ or another graphic manipulative software. The author's favorite filters are warm up, polarizer and soft focus which can be replicated in Photoshop™.

She urges you to experiment with aperture priority to control the depth of field. Term "depth of field" refers to the zone in a photograph which appears to be completely sharp. Just using the camera's Auto mode is unlikely to succeed in how she creates her beautiful photos of flowers. She makes them look ethereal or more like art. There are many examples of flower photos at different apertures and shutter speeds which helps you to understand the concept. With digital cameras being so popular today I think many of us never turn the knob to something other than "Auto".

The technical aspects in this book are very important but what affected me the most were viewing the beautiful flower photos. The author prefers impressionist and abstract painters and it shows in her photography. Creating abstract views brings us up close and personal. I have been photographing my garden flowers for years but come next summer I will certainly look at them differently through my lens because of this book. I highly recommend this book if you seriously enjoy photographing flowers or just looking at the beautiful prints. What is a book for but to expand your mind and perhaps to make you look at a subject in a different way. This book certainly does!