How to Get the Best Out of Flower Photography in Spring
Spring is a wonderful time of year for me. It’s all about new growth, fresh starts, and new beginnings. The 2025 spring in Marlborough has been quite challenging, mainly because we have experienced early springs over the last few years, and this year there has been a reset back to what we consider to be a normal spring. With that being said, the strong north-westerly winds have been quite persistent since early spring. These conditions have made flower photography particularly challenging, requiring more patience and careful timing to capture the delicate blooms in the best conditions.
In my main job, I work from Monday to Thursday, which gives me the luxury of a three-day weekend. I try to use this extra time to get out early and capture the delicate beauty of flowers in the soft morning light. This often means waking up at the same early hour as if I were heading to work, despite not having to be anywhere. The primary locations I focus on for my flower photography are Pollard Park, Seymour Square in Blenheim, and the flower gardens right where I live. Since I live in a vineyard about 8 kilometers from Blenheim, the very first thing I do when I wake up is check how strong the wind is blowing through the citrus trees just outside my front door. This simple weather check plays a big role in deciding whether it’s worthwhile to make the trip to Pollard Park or Seymour Square for photography.
What I have learnt over the years is that the very first thing I do when visiting the gardens for flower photography is, before even taking the camera out and setting up, I carefully walk around the gardens looking for flowers that are in good shape and of high quality, with no blemishes or damage. Sometimes, despite my best efforts, I walk through the gardens and find no flowers that are worth photographing, so I decide to wait another week to check on the flowers' health and condition. This decision often depends on the weather over the previous week — frost, strong winds, or heavy rain can all affect the flowers significantly.
The two lenses I primarily use for flower photography are the TTArtisan 40mm f2.8 Macro lens and the Sigma 18-50mm lens. The TTArtisan is a manual focus 1:1 macro lens, which was quite challenging to handle at first, but over time, I have learned how to maximize its potential. One unique feature of this lens is that the front inner barrel can be removed, allowing for extremely close-up macro shots of insects, something I plan to experiment with this coming spring and summer. On the other hand, the Sigma 18-50mm lens is also a 1:2.8 macro lens and has the shortest closest focusing distance of any lens I own, at just 115mm. An advantage of this lens is its compatibility with the Insect Eye Autofocus feature on my camera, which enables me to capture intricate and sharp details of insects like bees. Additionally, I can use the touch autofocus tracking feature, allowing the camera to lock onto an insect’s eye and follow its movement from flower to flower. This tracking works exceptionally well in still conditions, but if there is even a slight breeze, it becomes easy to loose focus, so I carefully decide when to enable this feature.
My preference for photographing flowers is usually either on overcast, cloudy days or in the early morning hours when the natural light is soft and diffused. I find these conditions ideal because the flowers exhibit a lot of natural contrast, and their colors tend to stand out vividly and beautifully. As the sun rises higher, it can easily cast harsh and unwanted shadows on the petals, and the colors often start to wash out to such an extent that, no matter how much post-production editing is applied, it becomes impossible to fully recover the richness and vibrancy of the original hues. In the past, I also used the auto white balance feature on my camera, which frequently resulted in inconsistent and less accurate colors and tones in my flower photographs. Now, using my Sony A6700, I set the white balance to a manual mode—specifically to Kelvin—with a value around 5500 or 5600K. This method consistently delivers the best, most natural colours and tones straight out of the camera, reducing the need for extensive colour correction later on. If the need arises to continue photographing in harsh light, I will either try to block the excessive light with my body or utilise a collapsible reflector to control and soften the lighting conditions.
These are just some of the various techniques I use, and have carefully perfected over many years, which have greatly helped me to consistently capture better and more detailed macro photos of flowers.
Capturing flowers in their natural environment is both challenging and deeply rewarding. Over the spring and summer months, I spend countless hours exploring Pollard Park, Seymour Square, and my own garden at home, patiently working to capture the true essence and delicate beauty of each flower in its unique setting.