A Piece from Don Barone
The soul of this planet, is found within its flowers.
Here’s the deal, and I promised the bosses here I would be gentle…I take pictures of flowers because I spent almost two decades as a crime/investigative reporter covering the worst we do to each other.
Taking pics of flowers gives me balance in life between the ugly and the beautiful.
A single rose at sunrise to me is simply hope for the rest of the day.
Caveat number one…I know nothing about flowers…either my wife or an app on my phone tells me what kind of flower I just shot…I do know what a Rose, Tulip and a Daisy looks like, but it ends there.
I shoot flowers year round, even when it snows here in Connecticut.
I don’t thank Mother Nature for flowers in the winter, but I do thank the lady in the produce department in the supermarket down the road though. If this is Wednesday then Daisies are half price as are some pretty yellow flower things…works for me.
I get the flowers, bring them home, slap on an extender ring on my camera body hooked into a 100mm Macro lens so I can get really good closeup shots, put the camera on a tripod and the flowers in a vase - bang - a photo of a pretty flower…in January…in New England.
I also buy my wife flower arrangements mainly to tell her “I Love You,” or “I’m Sorry…” the sentiment though doesn’t hurt the flowers, after a day or two I “borrow” the flowers and the vase they are in and start taking photos.
I suggest this if you want to take pics of flowers…don’t always shoot straight into the flower, everybody does that, take shots of it that shows a whole different side of it, literally.
The shots of mine that sell the best to non-relatives are the pictures I take of the backside of the flower. It’s a “who does that” kind of shot.
But there is beauty back there as well, and most people never have even seen it before.
My favorite flower shots are the ones I call: One Single Flower.
To me one single flower shows strength, one single flower isolates its beauty, it doesn’t get lost within the masses of like flowers within a field.
Here’s the best tip I can give you, it changed everything photo-wise when it comes to flower picture taking: Buy a couple Macro Extension Tube Rings that work with your camera and move in close on the flower…
…show us what we don’t normally see…
…show us the bug level view.
Oh…and yeah you can spritz water on the flower leaves, it is a pretty common effect, but you know what, get up early, real early, watch the sunrise light the flower for you…
…and then you’ll see that no matter how hard you try with the water spritz…
…the real life morning dew, up close on a petal or two is how it should be…
…on a canvas that is a Rose.
“The earth laughs in flowers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Once you've taken your flower photos, don't forget to make them into Canvas Prints, Photo Prints, Wall Decor, and more!