One piece of your flower photo composition is the background.  Even an experienced flower photographer can get so focused on the main subject that he forgets to check the background.  It’s easy to end up with distracting elements in the shot.  Some things are more noticeable than others and most are easily avoided.  With digital cameras you can check your image before you move on.  You can also remove distractions digitally with your editing software. 

Here are a few examples of flower photographs that have unwanted elements in the background and/or foreground.  These are un-edited and un-cropped.  Most of them can be fixed by simply cropping out the unwanted elements.  Others might require a change of perspective or editing.

The car in this shot is pretty obvious.  It was difficult to find a good angle on the daffodils in this bed (at the Portland International Rose Test Garden) because it’s in the parking lot.  If I was really in love with the image I would either crop it in close or edit the car out, but since I got a bunch of good shots that day, I’ll just skip this one.

Here’s another shot from the Portland Rose Garden.  Feet (or tripod legs) are easy to get in your shot when you’re shooting down.  Again, I would just crop the feet out of this one.  You can also change your perspective to a lower angle that shoots across the flower more.

One more from the Rose Garden.  This magnolia tree is located between two tennis courts.  I successfully avoided the court fence by shooting from a low angle.  I’m not sure I could have found a better angle to avoid the wires as well.  I like this shot so I’ll probably edit them out at some point.

I took quite a few shots of this tulip at my sister’s house.  I completely missed that this one had the house in the background until later.  I was able to get the shot with different backgrounds (the pink azaleas and the brown bark) but I can’t decide if the pink is too much or not.  This one is easily fixed by cropping the image.

People walking through the background of your photo is a common problem.  It’s most easily fixed by waiting for them to go by, but if you’re in a busy park or garden you can try to change your perspective (just remember to stay on the trail!)  Cropping would work well on this shot as well as removing the guy with your editing software.

I hope these examples have given you some ideas of what to watch for in your background.  When you remember to check your composition before you snap the shot you can easily avoid distracting elements.  Thanks to digital cameras and editing software you can also easily fix things you missed.

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We don’t see the white varieties as often down here… these could be Alba or White Linen.

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If I have some idea of what a flower is called, I will simply do a Google image search for what I think it is called and see if the pictures match.  This has been an effective way for me to identify some of the more common varieties.

If I’m looking at photographs of garden flowers, I often turn to one of the online seed or bulb catalogs, like Gurney’s Seed and Nursery or Breck’s.  These sites have lots of photographs and are easy to browse.

More often than not I have no idea what a flower is called.  My favorite place to turn in these situations is Wildflowers West.  This website has information on hundreds of wildflowers.  Instead of being organized by name, the images are grouped by color, so it is just a matter of browsing through the photos to find the right one.

I would love to hear about your favorite flower photograph identification methods or sources!

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I’m not sure what these white flowers are – they resemble several kinds of wild rose.  And the bees were huge and very busy.

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I hope all the moms had a fun Mother’s Day!

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